Mark Rothko created canvasses so big you could wallow in them: “You paint the larger picture, you are in it,” he reasoned. His mission statement applies to Morton Feldman, too, whose long durational scores – and Feldman scores are almost always long – equal those big pictures in sound. This 1971 choral work was composed in memory of Rothko after he killed himself and was commissioned by the Texas church for which the artist had been creating a series of murals. It’s a passionate, reverent piece with elegiac playing here from violist Kim Kashkashian – she paints bolder strokes than many dare in Feldman, which is refreshing. The Houston choir’s singing is warm and percussionist Steven Schick creates a great sense of space and ritual. The rest of the album explores a web of connections between John Cage’s Four2, Five, ear for EAR and In a Landscape and Erik Satie’s Ogives and Gnossiennes. The latter are marvellously strange and weightless in the hands of pianist Sarah Rothenberg.
