Morton Feldman – The Viola in My Life (I–IV)
Antoine Tamestit, viola
With musicians of the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln and guest artists
Conducted by Harry Ogg (I–II) and François-Xavier Roth (IV)
Label: Harmonia Mundi · Released: 2025
Available on all streaming platforms
By Damián Autorino
Editor at Moto Perpetuo
Morton Feldman’s The Viola in My Life (1970–71) marks a turning point in 20th-century music — the moment when the composer’s fascination with indeterminate sound worlds evolved into a more precise, contemplative lyricism. Written for the violist Karen Phillips, this cycle of four pieces, from chamber settings to a luminous orchestral finale, brought a new dimension of intimacy and melody into Feldman’s universe of soft dynamics and suspended time.
Antoine Tamestit approaches this music with the quiet authority of someone who has made the viola his artistic voice. A student of Jesse Levine — a close collaborator of Feldman — Tamestit has long navigated a repertoire that stretches from Bach to Widmann, from the classical lyricism of Harold en Italie to the extreme inwardness of contemporary music. Here he finds in Feldman’s score a mirror of his own philosophy: sound as an extension of breath, patience, and introspection.
The recording unfolds like a long exhalation. In the chamber works, Tamestit’s tone hovers between presence and disappearance, surrounded by flute, clarinet, piano, and percussion that seem to breathe with him. The fourth piece, conducted by François-Xavier Roth, opens into orchestral space without breaking the spell of intimacy — the viola emerging as a solitary thread of human warmth amid Feldman’s still, painterly textures.
The Viola in My Life is not a display of virtuosity but of attention. In its hushed eloquence, it invites listeners into the landscape Feldman once shared with the painters of the New York School: a space where colour and silence meet, and where each sound seems to hold an entire life within it.
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