Feldman, Vol. 3: Complete Music for Violin & Piano

Violinist Marc Sabat and pianist Stephen Clarke play six pieces by Feldman on this two-CD set. Of course, the first five add up to only 32 minutes of music, and the last one is the 80-minute behemoth For John Cage, which begins on Disc 1 and concludes on Disc 2. What’s interesting about the short pieces — Piece for Violin and Piano, Projection 4, Extensions 1, Vertical Thoughts 2, all lasting between two and five minutes, and even the 15-minute Spring of Chosroes — is that they all have the same qualities of space and indeterminacy found in Feldman’s longer works. Tiny exchanges of one or two notes (a plucked violin string matched by an ominous piano chord, say) appear seemingly out of nowhere, there’s a moment of silence, and something similar but different happens. For John Cage has at times a remarkably steady pulse and continuous melody, but it still seems to float past like a drifting cloud.