German violinist Carolin Widmann’s widely acclaimed ECM recordings have traversed a broad arc of music - from Schubert and Schumann to Tüür and Xenakis. Here she turns her attention to one of the pivotal works of New York composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987). Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1979, marked a new direction, with an almost painterly attention to detail in slowly unfolding music.
It is hard to say what kind of piece Feldman’s Violin and Orchestra really is; it is certainly not a concerto for violin and orchestra, even though the solo violin part is at least as demanding as those by virtuosi such as Pietro Locatelli and Niccolò Paganini or composers such as Brahms, Schönberg, Stravinsky and Berg. Feldman’s piece has no “brilliant” passages, no trace of acrobatics. In fact, the soloist should sit in the orchestra, not stand in front of it…The violin rarely ever emerges in a “soloistic” way and is never accompanied at all; its music seems much more to be subdued by the orchestra, before it re-emerges, in highest register, like music from a distant star, like an echo sounding from unlimited spaces - or else engendering echoes from the orchestra itself.
In this landmark Feldman recording, Carolin Widmann moves inside the glowing colourfield of sound with great delicacy and feeling, exploring the subtle orchestral texture, crafted together with conductor Emilio Pomàrico and the players of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.
