Apartment House: Morton Feldman Violin and String Quartet

In the late 1970s, American composer Morton Feldman began writing exceptionally lengthy compositions. Not only did these works push the boundaries of traditional concert duration, but more importantly, they explored how the composer could tackle the subject of sheer scale itself. Speaking about this challenge, Feldman said: "Up to one hour you think about form, but after an hour and a half it's scale. Form is easy: just the division of things into parts. But scale is another matter." At the end of the day, there are two types of people: those who love Feldman's late period and those who are totally unmoved by it.

If you still have not decided which camp you belong to and have two hours spare, this issue can be settled once and for all by listening to Violin and String Quartet. This work, just like many others from the late period, provides an excellent way to experience this sense of scale for yourself. The individual experience of time however might vary: things may freeze and compress, or possibly build up to lightning speeds.

The ensemble doing all the work on this recording is Apartment House with Mira Benjamin, Chihiro Ono and Amalia Young on violins, Bridget Carey on viola and Anton Lukoszevieze on cello. Not only is the collective known for their intense love of 20th-century New York School repertoire and the movement's ideological offsprings, but they also have plenty of experience performing it. Back in 2021, they recorded (also on Another Timbre) Feldman's other masterpiece from 1985—the magnificently haunting Piano and String Quartet, which was once described by a critic as "the aural equivalent of Chinese water torture."

Much has already been said about Feldman's delicate and hazy soundworld, as well as the remarkable efficacy of such minimal material to discombobulate and astonish. With each new studio recording of Violin and String Quartet—of which there are now three officially—a variety of listening experiences begin to emerge. Nonetheless, Feldman's music persistently manages to shine through the veils of different interpretations and their idiosyncrasies, retaining its distinctive and poetic essence. The piece resembles a communal ritual with participants entering the state of trance or perhaps dozing off much like in Japanese Noh theatre. It was thus not surprising to stumble upon a video on YouTube where the footage of a tiny sleepy cat was combined with Violin and String Quartet.

Fortunately, Apartment House's interpretation, with bows resolutely gliding up and down the strings, offers an exemplary and distinctive perspective. The most striking difference from, say, the 2002 Pellegrini Quartet's version is the acoustic features of the recording. It is noteworthy that Simon Reynell—the sound recordist running Another Timbre, and coincidentally the person who recorded this disc—mentions that his recording style was influenced by his formative listening experiences in his bedroom in solitude. Thus, it is no wonder to see how the label's signature close-miking style creates an intimate and direct listening experience, bringing out more physical characteristics of each instrument: their hisses, glossy harmonics and more pronounced attacks. Feldman, on the other hand, was fond of "the decay of each sound," trying to minimise the attack as much as possible and make it "sourceless." Another fascinating feature is the illusion of pushing the listener left and right alongside the bow strokes, thus bridging the gap between here and there, real and virtual, heard and unheard.

If Andrei Tarkovsky ever wanted to make another film where for the first hour a stranger wanders in the icy forest and then for the second one falls in the frozen lake in slow-mo, he would have to use Apartment House's Violin and String Quartet. It is simply chillingly good.