Morton Feldman’s intimate sound world

Morton Feldman is a composer whose radicalism is not loud, but whispers softly in your ear. 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of Feldman’s birth in New York. London-based pianist Pavel Kolesnikov honours this singular composer with a performance of his disorienting, richly textured Triadic Memories (1981). This concert forms a diptych with Kolesnikov’s performance of Chopin’s complete Nocturnes on Wednesday 7 April – another pinnacle of deep concentration and intimacy.

Triadic Memories, performed with the sustain pedal perpetually half-pressed, is a miracle of veiled stillness. Playing pianissimo with a steady, slightly halting rhythm, Feldman weaves variations on short, simple cells. The ear senses a hidden structure, yet that is merely an illusion. Feldman deliberately disrupts our memory and our craving for patterns. “Compare it to walking through Berlin”, he once said, “where all the buildings look the same, but aren’t”. Kolesnikov has a natural antenna for such magnificent, unorthodox ideas. Together with his partner Samson Tsoy, he recently curated the Ragged Music Festival in the Muziekgebouw for the second time.

Tickets: € 12,50 – € 39,0