Cage:The Piano Works I

On this CD:

1. Music for..., any combination of 1-17 instrumental parts (title of work is completed by number of instruments used)
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Stephen Drury

2. One, for piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Stephen Drury

3. Music Walk, for 1 or more pianos using radio and/or recordings
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Stephen Drury

4. One, for piano
Composed by John Cage
Performed by Stephen Drury

Tracks:

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

John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 10

Average customer rating:

Unusual Cage, but interesting

John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 10
John Cage , and Steffen Schleiermacher
Manufacturer: MD&G Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Soundtracks | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00006IWUW
Release Date: 2002-11-26

Tracks:

Opening Dance
Furniture Music Etcetera
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
I.
II.
Four3

Customer Reviews:

Unusual Cage, but interesting.......2003-11-30

Steffen Schleiermacher's series of John Cage's piano works was originally scheduled to reach an end after volume nine. However, while Schleiermacher was recording this series, he received word of other, previously undiscovered Cage pieces, and decided to record them. This disc contains them, plus some miscellaneous fill-up pieces, thus entirely justifying its subtitle, 'Etcetera'.

The disc starts off with a brief Opening Dance, an early-1940s dance piece. This is in a similar style to his Sonatas and Interludes, though it is for piano rather than prepared piano. Following this is a second previously unknown work, Furniture Music Etcetera, from 1980. This work is barely more than a sketch for realisation by the performer: it consists of instructions on when to play fragments of Satie and when to play fragments of Cage. Schleiermacher's reconstruction, thus, is necessarily speculative, but it entertains for its 20 minute duration.

Schleiermacher continues with the Suite for Toy Piano, from 1948. He had previously recorded the version for piano, but for this disc he bought a toy piano and recorded on it. This is a minor work, almost inevitably, but one recorded several times: I found Margaret Leng Tan's ECM recording marginally preferable.

Tan has also recorded the music for 'Works of Calder', a film about the mobiles of Alexander Calder. Her rendition scores over Schleiermacher in that she also includes the percussion music and narration from Burgess Meredith that appeared in the film itself. (Cage had intended to create the entire soundtrack with percussion and electronics, but ran out of time and had to supply 15 minutes of prepared piano music instead.) The music isn't Cage at its best, and I found little to separate Tan and Schleiermacher's readings in terms of desirability.

Lastly, Four^3, a work for the rather extraordinary combination of piano, offstage piano, violin (or oscillator) and twelve rainsticks. This is one of Cage's late number pieces, and thus the part for each performer indicates single notes or brief phrases, and a range of times between which the performer may start and stop playing them (in the case of the violinist, (s)he plays only one single tone for the whole piece). This is a more effective work than might be expected, the rainsticks providing an aural backdrop against which brief fragmentary melodies appear in the two pianos, with the high pianissimo violin tone flickering in and out of the texture.

Tracks:

Third Construction - Continuum Perc Qt
Logo I: Intro And Breakdown - Richard Nunemaker/David Nale/David Colson
Petite Ste: I. One For Al - Continuum Perc Qt
Petite Ste: II. For Marlene - Continuum Perc Qt
Fourscore - Continuum Perc Qt
Ku-Ka-Ilimoku - Continuum Perc Qt
Con: I. Allegro, Maestoso - Janna Lower/David Colson/Richard Brown
Con: II. Largo, Cantabile - Janna Lower/David Colson/Richard Brown
Con: III. Allegro, Vigoroso, Poco Presto - Janna Lower/David Colson/Richard Brown

Average customer rating:

Don't Miss This Lecture!
Cascades and simplicity meet a real committed virtuoso

Cage: Cello Works/Lecture on Nothing

Manufacturer: Etcetera
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Classical | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B0000000RI
Release Date: 1992-10-26

Tracks:

Etudes Boreales: 1
Etudes Boreales: 2
Etudes Boreales: 3
Etudes Boreales: 4
For A Str Player
Solo

Tracks:

Vars 1
Vars 2
Vars 3
A Dip In The Lake: Ten Quicksteps
A Dip In The Lake: Sixty One Waltzes
A Dip In The Lake: Fifty Six Marches
A Dip In The Lake: Lecture On Nothing

Amazon.com essential recording

Solo-instrument works by John Cage can be tricky. His scripted indeterminacy (with customarily Cagean instructions such as "any number of players and any means") can mean any number of things, including an invitation to unbridled virtuosity. And while Frances-Marie Uitti is certainly virtuosic--witness her brilliant Giacinto Scelsi: Music for Cello--she smartly takes another tack here. Her renditions of Cage's cello pieces, from the earliest (c. 1950s) 26' 1.1499" for a String Player and Solo for Cello (drawn from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra) to Études Boréales (1978) is stunning in its measuredness. Uitti gets inside the cello, extracting whistly overtones and pileup undertones, collating distant lines into a fabric that embraces interruptions, nonlinearity, and jumping octaves. Rounding out this Cage collection is Uitti's own rendition of the Lecture on Nothing, which occupies 41 minutes of the second CD. It's a great modernist-to-postmodernist look at the construction of a lecture, the stringing of language into something self-consciously coherent. It's one of Cage's best voice pieces, and Uitti does a fine job with it. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews:

Don't Miss This Lecture!.......2000-11-20

Never mind the cello pieces on this CD...the main payoff is the Lecture on Nothing. I have owned almost every CD of Cage's work and this one endures in my mind and in my life. Treat yourself to a literal, explicit version of 4'33" and get a copy of Lecture on Nothing. Caution: not for late night driving!

Cascades and simplicity meet a real committed virtuoso.......1999-04-05

If you are a cellist or like cello music you may not like tis compendium of Cage Cello Works. But Uitti is the premiere solo Cellist of Europe. She engaged in a Marathon in New York many years ago where she cleaned the shelves of new cello music from Britten to Scelsi. Here you need to admire her formidable experience playing this music. She puts more into it and has more sensitivity and a pure "feel" if you can in Cage than say the Arditti ever will. "Etudes Borealis" is like this granite rock that all avant-garde cellists need to play, That's if they are serious.

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