Morton Feldman – For John Cage

“It is hard to imagine a more skilled and thoughtful interpretation of this modern masterpiece, and indeed one ventures to call it a definitive recording.”

Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (JSMI)

“The actual performance has a fascinating tension…. when it’s over you’re not changed, exactly, but you’re a sightly different person just the same.”

The Wire

“Fantastic precision, beautifully tender rapt concentration”

BBC Radio 3 Record Review

“As the two performers gradually edge closer to each other with a shared sense of purpose during the work’s closing gestures, there’s something deeply moving about their precision, their sonic inventiveness, and their respect for each other.”

The Strad

“But in these times there’s time, and it passes swiftly as this hushed, slow music — an assembly of repeated, subtly modulated, spare fragments — weaves a compelling spell, thanks to the rapt concentration of the violinist Darragh Morgan, who plays without vibrato but with pinpoint tuning, and the pianist John Tilbury.”

Sunday Times

“The enlightening and perturbing performance of Morgan and Tilbury, so much in confidence with the American master’s poetics as to be able to fully unleash its intrinsic dramatic value…the skill of a veteran like John Tilbury and Darragh Morgan’s all but slavish reading take on a revealing power in this formidable independent release, an essential component in demonstrating the potential for expansion in the reading keys of Morton Feldman’s repertoire”

Esoteros

“A violin harmonic glowing from out of a piano tone, a touch of sul ponticello gruffness with which the violin comes near speaking, how the piano in this three-note descent is softly but surely warmed into sounding, how the violin is fragile and yet persists, how the two just now fold quietly together. But it probably will not. For this is one of the music’s lessons: irretrievability. And there is another here: indifference, how the music is not attuned to your desires. The music is not listening to you.”

Paul Griffiths, Record of the Week

“A gorgeous new recording of one of Feldman’s most elusive scores, with one of the composer’s greatest interpreters at the piano and an ideally poised violinist partner.”

National Sawdust Log

“Quietly dazzling performances light up Feldman’s introspective minor masterpiece.”

Limelight Australia

“Embedded in harmonic colour, with the finest sonic detail, the album is a feast.”

Jari Kallio (Chamber Music Album of the Year)

Classical Music Recording of the Year
Steve Smith, Night After Night

End of Year Recommended
Jim O’ Rourke

“No more words. Just listen.”

Norman Lebrecht