Feldman: Trio

New discs of Morton Feldman seem to appear every month, but the 1980 Trio for violin, viola and cello has only rarely been recorded. Yet it was one of the works that defined the final phase in Feldman's music, the pieces composed in the last seven years of his life in which he revisited some of the traditional instrumental combinations – string quartet, piano trio, piano quartet – but treated them in an utterly new way. By wanting to find out "what might happen in a very, very long piece in one movement" he began to create the vast musical canvases that are among his very greatest achievements. This performance of the Trio lasts 105 minutes, and inhabits a recognisable Feldman terrain built out of multiple repetitions of predominantly very quiet, gently decaying gestures in a constantly varying metre. It's music that demands intense concentration from the performers and the three here – Marc Sabat, Rohan de Saram and Aki Takahashi – ensure that nothing is overlooked.