While Morton Feldman’s complete catalogue of compositions is slowly making it to CD, most notably via the efforts of labels like Mode Records, HatHut and Col Legno, and with live performances of his most significant work seem to be increasingly rare (at least, in this part of the world), it was a real treat to visit the Music Gallery in Toronto for this piano recital by Montréal’s Brigitte Poulin (soloist, chamber musician and vocal accompanist). On this cool and quiet spring evening, Poulin performed Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus in the quiet confines of a small church, nestled in the heart of the city. Feldman’s later works in particular are noted for their marked stillness, for exploring the possibilities and tensions between sound and silence, taking shape on the most muted canvasses that seem to expand with every breath. Composed in 1985 (just two years prior to his death in 1987), For Bunita Marcus is no exception; the piece, one of only a few compositions for solo piano from Feldman’s later years, runs 77 minutes long and is characterized by suspenseful pauses in which the echoes of notes seem to hang still in time and space, and the listener hangs there with them, ears bent on each subtle shift, following each disappearing resonance into the soft hush of silence. Listening, I found myself becoming so sensitive to the music that even the slightest movement from a member in the small audience assembled there appeared like a ringing knell in my ears. And yet during the duration of the piece, another instinct is pulling me in a different direction; face to face with the challenge of sitting through the performance without making a sound (stupidly, I couldn’t imagine moving so much as my arm to scratch my forehead, or crossing my legs to relieve the circulation, for fear the sounds might overtake those of the piano), my thoughts moved about freely, from the performance and on to other subjects both mundane and exceptional, from daily monotonies to gathering ideas for a new character, plus a few stops in between. But the piece always anchored my thoughts, I always came back to it, it was waiting on the other side of each corner, in each turn of the road, and when I came out of that space, when the concert had ended and my thoughts returned abruptly to the here and now, I found the piece to be with me still, my mood still governed by the tensions and pauses, by the sensitivities inherent in the piece and by the performance itself, the very presence of a solitary piano in this small church. Indeed, Poulin’s performance showed all the restraint and skill of her experience, her passion for this music evident in her every gesture.

[Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus] requires an almost insane degree of concentration. This pianist has it in spades. It also requires — for us to see it through, — an enormous strength of conviction. She has some to resell. One doesn’t talk about interpretation anymore: we enter the realm of musical re-creation. Brigitte Poulin carves this score with an almost disconcerting ease. The goal of objectivity is reached and she brought us — I don’t quite know how — into a universe of lucid, meditative contemplation. It was such a rare experience of quiet intensity that its echoes still fill our ears with their whispers, like the play of light on closed eyelids. That kind of art one never gets enough of, since it provides us with so much peace. That’s the gift that an artist such as this can provide — for whom everything moves and stands still all at once.

Translated from French.

… The pianist Brigitte Poulin was mesmerizing. She gave an extraordinarily intelligent and exquisitely balanced reading of this complex, meditative piece.