MUSIC REVIEW : Two Hours of Feldman: Harmonic Relief

Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick paid homage to the late Morton Feldman Friday night when, partnered by pianist Vicki Ray, she tackled his two-hour “Untitled Composition” before a small, adventurous audience.

It was the first public concert in an Electric Avenue performance space in Venice called Wires, where the three-story wall behind the piano was hung with a Turkish kilim--”in honor of Feldman’s love for rugs,” explained Wires’ artistic director, Daniel Rothman.

The piece itself is a musical fabric, knit harmonically from the subtle physical discrepancies between the infinitely variable pitch of the cello and the fixed pitch of the piano. Composed in 1981, it was originally titled “Patterns in a Chromatic Field,” but Feldman dropped that name after the premiere.

The performance began at 8:15 p.m. with disjointed flourishes by the piano and stopped harmonics on the cello, generally in four-note patterns resembling the B-A-C-H theme in their crabby shape and dour color. After graduating to similar melodic patterns high up on the A and D strings, Duke-Kirkpatrick changed gears with a series of rich pizzicato chords at 8:27.

At 8:40, the tempo slowed as bowed chords on the cello began alternating with whole notes on the piano. Ray re-entered the fray at 8:50 with a series of glowing tone clusters.

Precisely at 9, a pack of dogs outside began to bark. At 9:05, the music finally began to settle into a comfortable, episodic flow of slow and usually slower still.

Throughout, it was as if the work was examining a stellar photographic plate of fragile harmonic relationships, the cello’s repeating melodic patterns creating a sense of “Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana” minimalism (though it is hardly trendy).

Although not the world’s greatest cellist technically--and the cello part is fiendishly difficult--Duke-Kirkpatrick focused so intently on shape and direction that she and Ray became absorbed into the music as only the best performers do. It was a sober evening’s entertainment and a powerful example, free of psychedelic hoopla, of music expanding consciousness.