Suggesting that Morton Feldman CDs ought to be ‘listened to at a much lower level than usual’ is foolhardy. Feldman marks the first bar of his solo piano piece For Bunita Marcus (1985) ppp and the next 75 minutes ostensibly roll forwards without any further tweaks of dynamic. In reality, though, the melodic contours – especially a recurring motif that tickles the spacious music surrounding it with a flurry of fast notes crushed into a bar of 1/8 – implies inbuilt hairpins and drop-offs. The pianist has been set an exercise in self-control. No matter what the expressive swells might be implying, restraint must be your watchword. Feldman is pitching his material against the natural grain of the piano but also of our expectations; ppp turns out to be a conceptual dynamic marking. And to hear this rubbing-your-stomach-while-scratching-your-head nest of paradoxes play out over the long haul I’d recommend that you resist turning down the quiet.

Seasoned Feldmanistas such as John Tilbury, Hildegard Kleeb and Sabine Liebner – each with a For Bunita Marcus recording to their names – would never try to prejudge your listening preferences, but Marc-André Hamelin is a new kid on the block when it comes to recording Feldman and we must forgive his greenness. Clearly he is in awe of what this music tells him about the piano that he doesn’t already know: ‘you are about to enter a world unlike any other’, his booklet note states, the point being that Feldman’s knack of building enormous and discursive structures out of tiny note cells – often memorable, like tiny corners of nursery-rhymes – forces you to reconsider how music moves over time. Opting for a safe and secure tempo that obeys Feldman’s crotchet=63 66 faithfully allows Hamelin to embed discreet momentum into the performance; Tilbury allows himself more breathing space, while Liebner’s daring, crawling tempo essentially restructures the work’s internal dimensions (88 minutes against Hamelin’s 72'38").

Ivan Ilić’s recent recording for the Paraty label leans towards a consciously warmed tone, an approach which Hamelin questions in his intelligently argued, pianistically adroit performance. Those mirage-like canons, where the music accrues rhythmic impetus near the beginning, glide like Russian ballerinas – at same time as Hamelin centres each note with a well-aimed, delicately resonant peck. His consistency throughout of tempo and touch tells of urgent dispatch, and yet the rather icy surface of Liebner’s recording, which nudges the sound-fabric too close to Webern, is not part of Hamelin’s more nuanced vision.