John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 5 (Two Pianos)

Editorial Reviews
From ClassicsToday.com
This is Volume 5 of MDG's ongoing series of the complete piano music of John Cage (1912-92). The grand irony for most composers is that they never live to see either their fame grow or their influence felt. This series--and this particular disc--highlights Cage's influence on much of postmodern American music (especially piano music), but especially the music of Morton Feldman. Feldman has his own distinct voice, but from Cage he got both his sense of suspended time and his knack for surprising (and unpredictable) tonalities. Of course, the student also can influence the teacher, as in Cage's 1989 composition called Two. Only Cage's predilection for thematic cogency and tonal fluidity prevents the piece from sounding like a disjointed Feldman work for two pianos. Exceptional here is A Book of Music, a 1944 composition for prepared piano that seems to anticipate some of Alan Hovhaness and much of Lou Harrison. It's unpredictable and never overstays its welcome.

Experience 1, of 1944, is a heartbreaking homage to Satie, played only on the white keys, itself strangely innovative. Music for Two (1984/87) has each note framed in specific phased structures with the actual piano strings bowed with fish line or wire to establish contrasting underlying textures. Pianists Josef Christof and Steffen Schleiermacher play with extraordinary care and exhibit a clear fondness for this music. Cage, however, isn't for everyone. Still, this series should become the high watermark for John Cage's piano music.

Tracks:

Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2

Tracks:

Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2
Complete Pno Music Vol.2

Customer Reviews:

imperfections of the page piano music.......2005-01-13

John Cage wrote piano music all his life, it was a genre that you can say was like a template for his creativity for whatever-wherever his fascinations and intellectual pursuits placed him there was piano music that followed. The early music is dominated by the interest in pure beauty, the sustainability of tones, inside and outside the piano. It was Henry Cowell that suggested the idea of placing nuts and bolts, woodscrews, erasers and rubber paraphanalia in between the piano strings to alter or dull or transmogrify its tones to render a gamelan-like timbre. The music here of these disks are the various "Music for" sort of generic in import, and that is what the pianist approach seems to be, in that there doesn't seem to be a wide pallette, a wide spectrum of variability. Some of these pieces were simply dots reiterated from imperfections Cage found on the a piece of paper,(the places without imperfections were silence). So here we have the equivalent of a "readymade" I suppose for musical composition only with a high degree of abstraction. Remember that the innovativeness in musical graphics was a high point within the avant-garde, the post-war; even Stockhausen dabbled in graphic procedures, for Boulez this realm was much too arbitrary so Boulez theoreticalized it with the help of Mallarme's Blue-Unbound "Livre", and alea, or the throwing of the dice,where Cage consulted the I-Ching to obtain readings for his works as in the "Music of Changes" also available within this set, not here but another installment.

On these disks however there is an incredible interest in the mixtures, and promuligations the linear richness of musical events that proceed from the struck piano tone (normal) to one that is muted with the flesh of the finger or palm, to plucked string(s) inside the piano box, to glissandi again within the inside strings of the piano. The problem I found was the lengths of these tones (which are not specifically notated), but graphically notated (meaning it is simply a black rhythmless unbeamed dot on the page)all seem to be the same length,or nearly so in projection; this is what strikes the ear as being so, so the music has a kinsa of sameness, a boredom of sorts sets. Now this music is not suppose to dazzle the imagination, it is simple to be like walking in a Zen garden forgetting the atrocities of the neoliberal order on the globe, simply one mind with timbre, so where is the "freedom", relative that is, for tones that are "free" in one country cannot be so in another.) Still I found all this music interesting to ponder if the experience is like simply looking for inperfections on the window glass pane of the ice formations there.

John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 5 (Two Pianos)

Average customer rating:

A strong collection of Cage's two-piano music

John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 5 (Two Pianos)

Manufacturer: MD&G Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

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

Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1

ASIN: B00004UAIK
Release Date: 2000-08-22

Tracks:

A Book Of Music (For Robert Fizdale And Arthur Gold): Part One
A Book Of Music (For Robert Fizdale And Arthur Gold): Part Two
Experience 1
Music For Two

Tracks:

Two^2
Three Dances: I
Three Dances: II
Three Dances: III

Customer Reviews:

A strong collection of Cage's two-piano music.......2003-11-30

This disc, containing Cage's complete music for two pianos, is roughly equally split between music for prepared piano from the 1940s and music for unprepared piano from the 1980s. It gives a good summary of two of Cage's major periods, in fine performances from Steffen Schleiermacher and Josef Christof.

A Book of Music was written for the virtuoso Gold and Fitzdale piano duo. This is in two parts, both of which are essentially a sequence of fairly primitivist dance pieces for two prepared pianos. This is entertaining music, though perhaps 35 minutes is a little long. Stronger, and indeed one of the best of Cage's 1940s works, are the Three Dances. Written for choreography, this triptych contains some of Cage's most effective prepared piano writing. The first dance is fast, the second mostly slow, and the third a ferocious, rumbustuous toccata with a Rite of Spring-like energy. This is exhilarating music, and Christof and Schleiermacher sound like they're having a great time playing it. The disc rounds off the 1940s with a short, fragmentary write-note Satie homage, Experiences I.

The first of the two 1980s works is Music for Two. This is simply the two piano parts from Cage's Music for ... series. The material consists of brief phrases, played normally, and long-held single tones, played by bowing the piano strings. The overall effect is slow and hypnotic. In contrast, Two^2 is explicitly structured. It consists of 36 brief pieces in the Japanese renga form (5-7-5-7-7), each a little over a minute long, played with the sustaining pedals constantly depressed so as to create a wash of harmony that doesn't entirely fade out in between the pieces. At 46 minutes, this is maybe a little too long, but it's still a strong piece.

Tracks:

Winter Music
Arolsen, February 8, 1998
For M.C. And D.T.
For P. Taylor And A. Dencks
TV Koeln
Waiting
Seven Haiku: For Elsa
Seven Haiku: Merce Armitage
Seven Haiku: Aghavni Vomini
Seven Haiku: For Richard Lippold
Seven Haiku: For Maro
Seven Haiku: For Willem De Kooning
Seven Haiku: For Sonia Sekula
Haiku: For My Dear Friend, Who
Haiku: What Stillness
Haiku: The Green Frog's Voice
Haiku: The River Phurabelle
Haiku: [No Title]
Music Walk

Tracks:

Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
Solo
34 Minutes 46.776 Seconds

Customer Reviews:

Hardcore Cage.......2005-01-24

There are some wonderfully marvelous items on these Disks,more the Hardcore Cage period the Fifties streaming into the Sixties. The Fifties is when Cage discovered Zen and chance processes but also trapsed into areas of performance art, something he introduced the Europeans to, The 'Water Music' is a wonderfully inventive example. The piece is about 8 minutes and is performance art where a single pianist plays a radio(turns it off and on it is not continuous,plays abrupt chords on the keyboard(, blows three different whistles into a bowl of water, (duck, warbler, and penny whistle)then shuffles a deck of cards with the sustaine pedal down for resonance, and proceeds to deal the cards into the piano hitting the open exposed strings to marvelously ideterminate pointillistic actually pings,tings. The audience also looks on at the large seven foot score.

The 'Winter Music' as well,for one to twenty pianos I recall a story of a performance in Italy where the audience inhabits a typical European aristocratic courtyard at a music school, and the surrounding two tier buildings (in a rectangle) have pianos that creates a wonderful antiphonal effect. Here you cannot get that, the piece comes across with intense convolutions, and indeterminate-ness,the work is very difficult to listen to, each event is unto itself, not related to anything anytime, other than the here an now of what is known or was known.Zen.

TV KOLN is a graphic work where you the pianist has options to play other noises or timbres, or sounds, usually a radio is used, or the human voice.KOLN was the music center of the avant-garde in the Fifties continuing to today in many respects. You can also tap different parts of the piano box body, and it is up to the pianist performance to discovered the registers of the piano fully. "MusicWalk" is like "Water Music"only for a "travelling" pianist who must walk within the performance space to make noises elsewhere than center stage; you can use differing timbres.The pianist here uses his voice as his extended timbres.

The "Concert for Piano" and Orchestra was/is a seminal work, it is not really a "Concerto" it simply means musicians can co- inhabit a place to play together or not. The music is a virtual encylopedia of graphic notation processes, playing arpeggiations, horizontal and vertical distributions of tones, clusters, tremoli, rolls, also playing the piano's insides. The best way to play this and again only a live performance will give you the import of it, is like Bach or Xenakis, where you simply 'flip a switch', turn on the sound. playing as if there is no one else in the world. very provate. The result can be mysterious, magical,fascinating, disorienting, also boring and tedious, but mixtures of these gestures as well is part of this piece.

Much of the playing here seems much too much the same, I would think if you are going to ambitiously mount entire swabbs entire tomes of Cage's piano music that you bring a large spectrum of what the music can be and you introduce as much variety as possible.I would have liked to have more "theatre" for performance art was born here. The radio is a wonderful instrument.Also electronically altered,morphed timbre is perfectly allowable in this music,contact microphones would have brought another dimension to these works, and you then get outside the box of the stereo renderings of CD and there was none of that to be found. Here the readings are hardcore,there is no right or wrong, merely interesting and uninteresting.

Track Listings:

Track Listings

track listings

Track Listings

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