Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
This fascinating and bold concert featured the works of the ‘word man’ and the ‘note man’, and their absurdist radio play Words and Music
A few months before he died, Morton Feldman told a radio interviewer that he considered Samuel Beckett to be “a word man, a fantastic word man” and that he, Feldman, always thought of himself as a note man. The two worked together twice, first on an opera and then, in 1987, on Words and Music, an absurdist radio play that Beckett repurposed with Feldman’s music. Their mutual sympathy was apparent in Sheffield Chamber Music festival’s affectionate staging of the latter, which occupied this concert’s second half.
Before that, however, the juxtaposition of a minimalist Beckett monologue with one of Feldman’s classic uncoordinated scores laid bare their deep artistic synergy. Rockaby, a desolate exploration of ageing and isolation, was the opener. Directed in the round by Vicky Featherstone, the rigid protagonist – a magnetic Siobhán McSweeney – revolved in her rocking chair, listening and occasionally responding to her own recorded voice. It was hard not to sense the heavy hand of dementia behind the singsong fragments and the fading woman’s desperate final quest for human connection.
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Crucible Playhouse, SheffieldThis fascinating and bold concert featured the works of the ‘word man’ and the ‘note man’, and their absurdist radio play Words and MusicA few months before he died, Morton Feldman told a...
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