MORTON FELDMAN : Routine Investigations (Ensemble Recherche) (1994) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

 These five works, written between 1970 and 1976, date from that critical period in Morton Feldman's career when the composer began notating rhythm precisely (as opposed to his earlier experimental work with graphic notation and the floating sonorities of the Durations series) and reintroducing melody, especially in "The Viola in My Life," a series of four works (the first two of which are included here) written for violist Karen Phillips. Barbara Maurer's execution of these delicate wisps of melody trailing off into space is exemplary, as are all the performances by Freiburg's Ensemble Recherche. Each of these extraordinary works creates its own personal universe in terms of both material and instrumentation, from the romanticism (lowercase r) of the "Viola" pieces to the ghostly percussion of "For Frank O'Hara" (which contains that most rare of events in Feldman's music, a shattering fortissimo crescendo on snare drum -- once heard, never forgotten), and apart from setting the stage for his long late (post-1981) pieces, they together offer irrefutable proof that Feldman almost single-handedly restored intuition to American experimental music. As Kyle Gann astutely notes in his brief accompanying essay, "Feldman rescued subjectivity from bad faith." Essential listening. Dan Warburton       Tracklist + Credits :