Thursday, November 15, 2007

modern music in downtown fort worth

bulletin from other arts:

Other Arts has a pair of concerts in early December that I want you to know about. Pianist Louis Goldstein will be performing Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories (1983) on December 2nd, and John Cage's Sonatas & Interludes for prepared piano (1948-1950) on December 3rd. Both concert begin at 7:30 PM at Van Cliburn Recital Hall in the Maddox-Muse Center, 330 4th Street just east of Bass Hall in downtown Fort Worth.Tickets are available through Bass Ticketing 817 212-4280 or at the door on the evening of the performances. Tickets $23, $18 for students and seniors &, if you buy tickets to both concerts, there's a discount of $5/per ticket ($36 for both concerts; $26 for students and seniors).

Throughout his long career, Cage was interested in subverting any learned habits he may have had as a composer. The prepared piano (an instrument that has been altered by inserting mutes of various types among the strings of the instrument to radically alter the sounds) was one of the earliest strategies he used to try to de-familiarize the musical process for himself, and the Sonatas and Interludes is the culmination of his works in this mode. The preparations of the piano's strings often result in haunting, otherworldly sounds and the hour-long work is really quite lovely, full of charming melodies.

Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories is an elegant, meditative work of crystalline melodies and shimmering chords. Subtle shifts in rhythm and harmony take on mysteriously heightened dramatic weight in in this lengthy (more than ninety minute) work.

Pianist Louis Goldstein, on the faculty of Wake Forest University since 1979, has focused primarily on the performance of modern and contemporary music for more than thirty years. His recordings of these two works have received lavish praise.

Triadic Memories and Sonatas & Interludes are unlike anything else you have heard before. Both are major 20th century works for piano receiving their Fort Worth premiere by a masterful interpreter of contemporary music and this is an extremely rare chance to hear them performed in concert. I hope that you'll attend one or both of these concerts.

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