Putting the classy in classical

David Lang, in liner notes for a fine new Bridge recording of Morton Feldman's Piano and String Quartet (with Vicki Ray and the Eclipse Quartet), describes the dress rehearsal for the premiere of Feldman's Coptic Light, at the New York Philharmonic in 1986: "The orchestra, reacting to the music's extreme focus and restraint, booed him, threw their orchestral parts around, and literally barked at him like dogs." The incident recalls the Philharmonic's notorious misbehavior at the 1964 premiere of Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis — an episode meticulously recounted in Benjamin Piekut's recent book Experimentalism Otherwise. (Here's a pdf excerpt.) The current Philharmonic is, happily, more professional in its approach to new music.