In the 1900s, the relatively young nation of the United States made its first marks on Western art music. Many of these arose through the minimalist movement, where the sense of musical agency was moved from composer to listener. While the European tradition from Bach to Schönberg hade focused on the composer’s active treatment of their material in a so-called “developing variation”, minimalism took a more beholding stance.
“I don’t push the sounds around”, New York composer Morton Feldman told his European colleague Karlheinz Stockhausen. In Feldman’s hour-long Bennardo-Larsson Duo: Feldman: For John Cage, a violin and piano explore subtle shifts in the not-quite-unchanging, inspired by monochrome painting and intricately woven Persian rugs.
The instrumentation is viola and piano.
The concert is arranged by Levande Musik, with support by Göteborgs Stad, Kulturrådet and Västra Götalandsregionen.
