Cage: Variations I, II, And III

Track Listings

1. Variations I

2. Variations II/Lecture on Nothing

3. Variations III

Tracks:

Variations I
Variations II/Lecture on Nothing
Variations III

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Gerd Zacher: Orgelwerke [Hybrid SACD]

Manufacturer: Cybele
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0009WVEJA
Release Date: 2005-10-25

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.

Track Listings: