To this untutored listener, "Durations" is also exceptional because the economy employed in scoring the strings, flute, tuba and violin allow for each instrument to have its own space so that the the dynamics, interactions, and atmosphere created are hypnotic and dream-like. Interestingly, the one section of "Durations III" marked as "Fast" is, rather, a little less slow than the rest of the piece, but hardly a jaunty allegro!
"Coptic Light," a 1986 piece for a full orchestra from the end of Feldman's life is a very different aural experience. It is also dream-like, but more on the nightmarish side, though in a captivating and compelling way. Repetitive washes of strings and brass are accompanied by the light rumbling of percussion and there is a sort of dissonant effective even as the scoring has a strong logic to it.
Feldman was said to have been inspired with this work by his long-standing fascination with textiles of the early Coptic society in an exhibit at the Louvre. He then thought about the role of the textiles in that society and applied this musically in terms of, as Peter Niklas Wilson states in the liners, "the atmosphere in which they had arisen if one were to hear them two thousand years from now."
Another interesting observation by Wilson had to do with a statement by Jean Sibelius about the distinction between an orchestra and a piano being the latter had pedals to alter the effect of the music. Feldman, then, "set out to create an orchestral pedal, a pedal changing constantly amid fine nuances" throughout the score of "Coptic Light."
The sound quality of this CPO recording is excellent and the performance by the Ensemble Avantgarde from Leipzig is beautifully rendered.
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