Kim Kashkashian, Sarah Rothenberg, Houston Chamber Choir
Release Date: 23 October 2015
Label: ECM New Series
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 028948117963
Genres: Classical
Description
The album 'Rothko Chapel' addresses a network of musical relationships and inspirations, taking as its main focus Morton Feldman's work named for the Houston, Texas multi-faith chapel built to house Mark Rothko's site-specific paintings.
Feldman considered that his 'Rothko Chapel' lay "between categories, between time and space, between painting and music", and described the score as his "canvas". Amongst his most important influences were abstract painters, his friend Mark Rothko prominent amongst them. (Rothko, for his part, yearned to "raise painting to the level of music and poetry".) Feldman was also liberated by the freewheeling example of John Cage's work. "The main influence from Cage was a green light,'' Feldman said. ''It was permission, the freedom to do what I wanted.'' Cage, the most relentless of 20th century experimentalists, didn't acknowledge what he called an "ABC model of 'influence'" but always had a special fondness for Satie, a musical inventor of good-humoured originality with whom he could identify.
Feldman's piece was first played in the chapel in 1972. On the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Rothko Chapel in 2011, a concert was held there bringing together works of Feldman, Cage and Satie. This programme was reprised for the present CD with recordings made at other Houston locations - Rice University (Cage, Satie) and the Brown Foundation Performing Arts Theater (Feldman).
Leading viola player Kim Kashkashian negotiates the subtle, glowing textures of Feldman's planes of sound, joined by Sarah Rothenberg on celeste, and supported by percussion and choir. Rothenberg, on piano, plays Satie's Gnossiennes and Cage's Inner Landscape, and the Houston Chamber Choir sings Cage's Four, Five and more, illuminating this rarely heard choral music.
Personnel: Kim Kashkashian (viola), Sarah Rothenberg (piano, celeste), Steven Schick (percussion), Sonja Bruzauskas (mezzo-soprano), Lauren Snouffer (soprano), Houston Chamber Choir, Robert Simpson (conductor)
Tracklisting
Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica & Vida Mikneviciute
Arvo Part
Thomas Larcher
John Holloway Ensemble
Heinz Holliger & Anton Kernjak
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra & Tonu Kaljuste
Karlheinz Stockhausen Michaels Reise
Andras Schiff
Soloists; Les Traversees Baroques; Meyer
Richard Casey, Annabelle Lawson, Joanna Lam, Peter Lawson, Stephen Plews, Jean Hasse, David Owen Norris, John McCabe, Aleksander Szram
Duncan Honeybourne, Helen Cawthorne
Maria Callas
Mayke Rademakers
Katharina Konradi, Catriona Morison, Ammiel Bushakevitz
Lisa Illean, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, GBSR Duo, Juliet Fraser, Explore Ensemble
Narratio Quartet
