Three Dances - Joshua Pierce, Piano

On this CD:

1. Mysterious Adventure, for prepared piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

2. TV Köln, for piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

3. Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, for prepared piano solo
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

4. Dream, for piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

5. The Perilous Night, for prepared piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

6. Nocturne, for violin & piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Frank Almond, Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

7. Three Dances, for 2 prepared amplified pianos
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Dorothy Jonas, Joshua Pierce

Tracks:

Adagio For Strings
In A Landscape
Ogive Number 1
Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo
Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte
L'Inverno
Triple Concerto
Largo From Xerxes
Piece In Old Style I
Piece In Old Style III
Opus 132

Tracks:

Adagio For Strings: Ferry Corsten Remix
Adagio For Strings: ATB Remix

Amazon.com

William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style is an ambient album that rejigs 11 works by classical composers in a particularly tacky fashion. Even though Orbit has proved his mettle as an innovative and exciting producer for others--Blur's 13 and Madonna's Ray of Light--this is an ungainly meeting of the sublime and the absurd that, frankly, doesn't work. Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," Ludwig van Beethoven's "Triple Concerto," Henryk Gorecki's "Piece in the Old Style I," and Antonio Vivaldi's "L'Inverno" are four that unfortunately meet their maker in a crude pileup of flat, belching synths and wallpaper flourishes. If he had combined live instrumentation with a playful reverence for the arcane glories of the past, perhaps he could have managed to make reality out of that most elusive of notions: experimental music that actually sells. However, Orbit fails to do anything more than resemble a second-rate Vangelis. --Maxine Kabuubi

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding. A classic........2007-06-06

I have been working in electronic music for almost 20 years years. I have a massive library of music for almost any reason, mood and itch. Tonight, I am taking the five minutes to stop and write how unique, amazing and consistently refreshing this album is everytime I go back to it since the day it was released.

Highly Melodic, very electronic and overall lacking the percussive elements most have come to know when listening to Orbit.

Much more sophisticated than the average listener might appreciate.Consider it a staple for anyone serious about electronic music.

I believe anyone rating this poorly is looking for a pop appeal that you just won't find here, thankfully.

Pay not attention to the crab behind the curtain.......2006-06-22

I don't know who Maxine Kubabi is. She's certainly untitled to her opinion. An "ungainly meeting of the sublime and the absurd?" What a sublimely empty and inadequate statement.

You have to know something about a genre before you can be an effective critic inside it. You should be able to specify why you don't like something in some detail, rather than resort to crabby nebulousities ... that's greasy kid stuff.

What Orbit has done is to realize some old, familiar works in an electronic medium, using smooth and musical strokes. He's taken many big chances. Some of them worked out well, others not as well as one might hope. But he deserves kudos for taking a risk and for making some of it work.

Why would anyone who *likes* electronic music complain that it doesn't have live instrumentation? That's like complaining that jazz has no rock and roll in it. "Reverence"? "Second rate Vangelis"? so: you were disappointed that Orbit didn't create more of the kind of schmaltz you personally like. Yanni, anyone?

For those who actually like electronic music, and like Beethoven's Opus 132, please, give that track a listen. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

This is incredible. Arrogant but incredible.......2006-05-26

I have been a fan William Orbit since Water from a vine leaf and I have to admit while this ins't exactly a electronica per se it is still amazing to see what he has done with our classics. The listening experience depends solely on the listener. More ambient than anything else I have heard though.

Recommended for William orbit and curious georges

not a rave.......2006-02-04

If you're looking for something to pop in late at night to dance to...this is not the album. This album is eery and some of it is painful. It's not full of upbeat electronics like originally thought it would be. But, I love it. It's great to listen to while just thinking...relaxing...reading...it's beautiful.

Pieces in a peaceful style........2005-11-28

Being a fan of ambient and electronica for some time, I decided to give this a try. I can understand how some may simply hear this as a cheesy reworking of the classics, just a man and his keyboard, but it's really much deeper than that if you just sit and listen. I suggest not comparing to the originals as much as enjoying what these pieces are themselves. A few tracks do lag, and there are quiet spots, but as a whole I find "Pieces In A Modern Style" to be almost hypnotic, and as I said in my review title, rather peaceful. The tracks I prefer the most are "Adiago For Strings", "Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo", "L'Inverno", and the music-box sounding "Triple Concerto". However the others are fine as well. I say, if you think you might like this, you probably will. It's well worth the used price if nothing else.

Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works 1975-1999

Average customer rating:

Excellent
Rzewski's 7 CD Compilation
incredible playing of works with mixed content/concept

Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works 1975-1999
Frederic Rzewski
Manufacturer: Nonesuch
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Fred
Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated
Iannis Xenakis: Percussion Works
The Music of Elliott Carter Vol. 7; Boston Concerto, Cello Concerto, ASKO Concerto, Dialogues

ASIN: B00006JI9X
Release Date: 2002-09-24

Amazon.com

From his 1975 mega-variation set, The People United Will Never Be Defeated, to his eight-hour "novel for piano," The Road, Frederic Rzewski breathed new life, passion, and vitality into the long dormant composer-pianist tradition. Political and social issues provide a subtext from which Rzewski's musical imagination explodes with purposeful virtuosity, stylistic freedom, and high drama. He can conjure slow droplets of notes on a dark, still background ("A Life"), only to cram and compress a multitude of disparate popular themes within a larger, traditional framework (Sonata for Piano), or integrate music and spoken words to a level where they cannot exist without the other ("De Profundis"). Rzewski the composer provides Rzewski the pianist plenty of opportunity to display his ingenious improvisatory mettle: his cadenzas for "Mein Yingele, Which Side Are You On" particularly dazzle. There are, to be sure, other ways to play this music, such as Marc-André Hamelin's suavely proficient People United and Paul Jacobs's authoritative premiere recording of the North American Ballads. But the elemental force and personality defining Rzewski's pianism leave as indelible an imprint as his music. No lover of contemporary piano music should miss this important, superbly annotated release. --Jed Distler

Customer Reviews:

Excellent.......2005-10-07

Rzewski is one of the greatest composers of our time.
Definately a must have!

Rzewski's 7 CD Compilation.......2004-01-30

7 Discs of amazing piano performances from Rzewski, and this time around he's playing his own music. Highlights: First track off 1st CD: "North American Ballads (4) for piano, Nos 1-04", an excellent introduction to this compilation. Worth the money? ...Ahh, I dunno.. I hate giving my money away to loony liberals, but in this case, his music is brilliant so I found my purchase well worth it.

incredible playing of works with mixed content/concept.......2002-11-18

Rzewski said he never developed a style or musical language,but if you work your way through all seven disks here there is actually a musical language which emerges and a static dimension as well to Rzewski's creativity.
His music demands a strong subject, an inflammatory one if possible to get his improvisatory creative imagination in gear, as his celebrated solidarity exhibited in the "36 Variations" on the "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" which to my ears still remains the high point of all these disks. His musical language is magnetized around simple contrasts,timbral virtuosity and variations on the music materials he selects, as even the "North American Ballads" suggest,which also maintains a fascination over the years.Equally if not more timbrally fascinating are his "Four Pieces" which are not here.Rzewski I beleive is a composer like Stravinsky, he needs something to manipulate that is already formed in the real world,very postmodern in orientation and his music then never claims a magical dimension where moments can synergize amongst/between itself,themselves, as exhibited by his political brethren as Christian Wolff or Luigi Nono. He does however utilize the entire 20th Century piano vocabulary, but is always drawn toward a what we can refer to as Rzewski-esque chromaticism, a dovetailing of the fifth semitone interval, as: c-e-f#-b-Bb-f,something you may find in the piano music of Karol Syzmanowski. The "Fantasia" opening here is a good example of this,played with great passion and might also suggest the harmonic meaderings of Busoni.Also the 26 miniature variations on "Mayn Yingele" had an interesting subject dedicated to the memory of Kristallnacht, the desecration of synagoges in Germany,the story of a Jewish man working 18 hour days who never sees his son, only sleeping.The musical form of "miniature" is quite interesting,and one Rzewski knows quite well.
He has impressive TV miniature Operas entitled "Chains".
These miniature variations are followed with a Cadenza prior to Variation # 23, a procedure he is fond of, a summing up with a virtuoso recapitulative display.He does similar handlings in his Cardew disk on "We Sing For the Future".

There are some very low points I found in this piano music as the "Sonata" written in 1991, which has smatterings of glissandi Liberace like, and a stupid playfulness, that grows musically thin very quickly but is indeed disarming. The Agitato, the last movement begins with a low register uttering of "Taps".
Also the various four parts of "The Road", a work when complete will span some eight hours,all seemed arbitrary to me with the use of the voice to accentuate violent phrasings, and scouring the insides of the piano, with Cage-like tappings of the piano body.This wasn't exciting to say the least, and incredibly self-conscious.And I don't see what agenda is in place to transport the listener here to sustain such length.

Of course as I've mentioned Rzewski's creativity emanates from many places particulary the imagery of the Left, but was formed in his years with MEV the improvisatory ensemble in Rome,in the late Sixties, playing also with self-imposed American exiles, living on Fulbrights and Guggenheims. Rzewski for instance has been known to improvise cadenzas in his performances of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier Sonata", as well as in the early Sixties was the first to include the repertoire of the avant-garde of Stockhausen, Cage,Wolff and Boulez. Rzewski remains a unique example of radicalism in music with an affinity for the causes of the Left,but not so much as Cardew who was more an activist,founding a Marxist Party,nor not so academic bound as Christian Wolff,nor as deeply committed to European intellectual thought and high modernity,technology as Luigi Nono. But his music maintains an accessible directedness,with a high committment to lyricism.
His music also succeeds at times quite well in a dramatic situation as his 50 minute "Antigone-Legend", for Soprano Voice and Piano, or his chamber opera "The Invincible Persian Army"(1984).

Cage: The Works for Violin, Vol. 3
Average customer rating:

Cage for the already converted

Cage: The Works for Violin, Vol. 3

Manufacturer: Mode
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Cage, John | ( C ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
Chamber Music | Forms & Genres | Classical (c.1770-1830) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
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John Cage: The Works for Violin, Vol. 4

ASIN: B00004SCDE
Release Date: 2000-10-24

Tracks:

Six Melodies For Violin And Keyboard
Six Melodies For Violin And Keyboard
Six Melodies For Violin And Keyboard
Six Melodies For Violin And Keyboard
Six Melodies For Violin And Keyboard
Six Melodies For Violin And Keyboard
Nocturne For Violin And Piano
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Eight Whiskus For Violin
Two6 For Violin And Piano
One10 For Violin

Customer Reviews:

Cage for the already converted.......2003-11-17

This disc contains two performances of Two^4, one of John Cage's late "number pieces". One is for violin and sho--a Japanese instrument somewhat similar to the mouth-organ, the other for violin and piano (Cage allows both in the score).

This might seem a very negative idea--and indeed it does pretty much make this a disc only for those who are already Cage fans--but because of the alternative instrumentations, there is some merit in having two performances. (In addition, in this work, as in many late Cage pieces, while the notes to be played in each part--and their order--is fixed, there is quite a bit of flexibility regarding when to play them, and for how long. Naturally, this means that the harmony and counterpoint created by the two instrumental lines can vary quite dramatically from one performance to the next.)

Much of the music involves very slow-moving, long-held single notes on the violin--microtonally notated at 84 notes to the octave--counterpointed against faster-moving, normally-tempered chordal material in the piano or sho part. (It should be noted that the sho version sounds significantly different from the piano version, as the sho builds up chords one note at a time, holding them for a long time while the piano strikes the chord once and then fades away.)

Tracks:

Triple-Paced: First Version, Piano
Triple-Paced: First Version, Piano
Triple-Paced: First Version, Piano
Triple-Paced: Second Version, Prepared Piano
Totem Ancestor: Prepared Piano
Ad Lib: Piano
Jazz Study: Piano
Music For Marcel Duchamp: Prepared Piano
Works Of Calder: I. Prepared Piano
Works Of Calder: II. Film Soundtrack With Narration
Works Of Calder: III. Film Soundtrack With Percussion
Works Of Calder: IV. Prepared Piano
One Squared: For 1-4 Pianos, 1 Performer

Customer Reviews:

Tan once again proves her credentials as a Cage intepreter.......2003-11-15

Given the stature of Margaret Leng Tan as an interpreter of John Cage's piano music, it was a wise move of Mode to assign at least one volume of their ongoing Cage piano music project to her. Even though the works here are not--with two exceptions--Cage at his best, the results are eminently satisfactory.

The first third of this disc is devoted to miniatures from the 1940s. Triple-Paced appears twice, first in a piano version, replete with Cowellesque strumming inside the keyboard, and secondly in a tightened, revised version for prepared piano. Tan's rhythmic snap is ideally suited to both versions of this cheerful dance piece. Also for dance is the prepared piano Totem Ancestor, a marginally less sophisticated sister to the later work. Rather less impressive are the two jazz-inflected works that follow. Both Ad Lib--left incomplete by the composer and completed by Tan herself--and A Jazz Study are somewhat halfhearted essays in the style, though they are still entertaining. Much finer is the hypnotic pre-minimalist prepared piano monody of Music for Marcel Duchamp, originally written for film but eminently worth a place in the concert repertory.

Works of Calder was also written for film, and in this performance Tan sensibly chooses to fit the sound and dialog from the original film in between her performances of 16 minutes of prepared piano music from it. Cage had apparently wanted to do the whole film with percussion and electronics, but had only enough time to do a few minutes this way, hence the prepared piano music, which is not Cage at his best. Tan does her best with the music, but it remains nothing more than a curiosity.

Not so One^2, in my opinion one of Cage's best works. In this late piece from 1989--for a single pianist playing between one and four pianos (Tan plays it on three)--the score indicates chords, single notes and tremolos to be played and leaves it up to the performer how to play them (as well as allowing a certain amount of preparation of the pianos). In this performance, Tan's account shows that Cage's musical technique is flexible enough to create what is a conventionally dramatic piano work, with the tension building inexorably over 17 minutes before reaching a powerful climax.

Cage:The Piano Works I
Average customer rating:
Cage:The Piano Works I

Manufacturer: Mode
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Cage, John | ( C ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
Character Pieces | Short Forms | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Keyboard | Instruments | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000000NZ0
Release Date: 1995-09-19

Tracks:

The Piano Works 1: Music for Two
The Piano Works 1: One
The Piano Works 1: Music Walk
The Piano Works 1: One

Works For Piano & Prepared Piano, Vol. 4

Average customer rating:

Works For Piano & Prepared Piano, Vol. 4

Manufacturer: Wergo
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Modern & 20th Century | Historical Periods | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Classical | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B000024SLC
Release Date: 1996-10-22

Tracks:

Five Songs For Contralto
Metamorphosis
Bacchanale
A Valentine Out Of Season
Tossed As It Is Untroubled
Root Of An Unfocues
Music Walk - Joshua Pierce/Adria Firestone/Joseph Kubera/Myra Melford/Fumiko Miyanoo
Jazz Study
Music Walk - Joshua Pierce/Adria Firestone/Borah Bergman/Adria Firestone/Joseph Kubera/Myra Melford
Experiences: I. Duo For Two Pnos - Joshua Pierce/Adria Firestone/Dorothy Jonas
Experiences: II. Solo for voice - Adria Firestone

Cage: Works for Piano & Prepared Piano, Vol.1

Average customer rating:

Cage: Works for Piano & Prepared Piano, Vol.1

Manufacturer: Wergo
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000005WBB
Release Date: 1993-12-08

Tracks:

Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: A Room - She Is Asleep
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: Duet For Voice & Prepared Piano
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: Quartet For Twelve Tom-Toms
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: A Room
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: In A Landscape
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: Seven Haiku
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: Totem Ancestor - Two Pastorales
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: No.1
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: No.2
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: And the Earth Shall Bear Again
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: Waiting
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol.1: For M.C. And D.T .

Amazon.com essential recording

Joshua Pierce brings to John Cage's music an almost uninhibited classicism, but that only bolsters the compositions. He opens A Room and emphasizes its shifts with the attention of a concert pianist, rather than someone who follows Cage's directions to play the piece very quietly. Pierce, in fact, takes each of these dozen works, all of them dating to the 1940s and '50s, and draws from them the resonant Cagean oddness--phrases of weird shapes and all. But he adds a ton, too. In a Landscape sounds almost wholeheartedly minimalist in its tone colors, and She Is Asleep sounds both drummerly (on the artfully flat prepared piano) and jazzy, with Jay Clayton dropping some scat vocals in ever so subtly. This is, after all, the period when Cage was discovering the closeness between percussion and motion, on the one hand, and percussion and the modified piano, on the other hand. So these pieces blurt out chunky phrases, build with shaded drama, and rumble delicately along. It's a difficult assessment making suggestions when it comes music so notoriously open to interpretation. But Pierce has played all the Cage piano and prepared-piano stuff, creating a Wergo series that any lover of the piano repertoire should own in full. Here, anyway, is an excellent introduction, perfect for the Cagean neophyte and still inventive enough to energize owners of Roaratorio or Frances Marie Uitti's Works for Cello. --Andrew Bartlett