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The
25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage
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Composer:
John
Cage
Conductor: Paul
Price, Merce
Cunningham
Performer: Anahid
Ajemian, Joan
Brockway, et al.
Ensemble: Manhattan
Percussion Ensemble, Instrumental
Ensemble
Wergo (Ger) - #6247 / December 9, 1994
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here for more information |
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Hard to believe that as early as 1958 there was a 25-year
retrospective concert of John Cage's music. But this 3-CD
set documents both the concert and its meaning for the history
of New Music. Organized by no less than Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg and Emile de Antonio, the event sparked heated
controversy--some of it documented in the crowd's reaction
to Cage's early tape- music piece, Williams Mix. The
expansive booklet accompanying the CDs includes loads of prescient
commentary, much of...Read
more
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Cage:
Sonatas and Interludes, etc / Aleck Karis |
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Composer:
John
Cage
Performer: Aleck
Karis
Bridge - #9081 / August 18, 1998
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here for more information
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While John Cage never wrote anything you'd call Classical
Top 40, his music up to 1950 is far more accessible than the
random and chance-influenced pieces he created later on. These
mysterious, wispy pieces sound as though they were written
for a small ensemble of ghostly percussion instruments, although
they are played by a single performer playing a piano with
various gadgets attached to the strings. You need the clear
sound of this recent digital recording to appreciate the music,
and Karis...Read
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Cage:
Litany for the Whale / Hillier, Riley, et al |
Composer:
John
Cage
Conductor: Paul
Hillier
Performer: Alan
Bennett, Paul
Elliott, et al.
Ensemble: Theatre
of Voices
Harmonia Mundi (Fra) - #907187 / June 9, 1998
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here for more information |
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John Cage's vocal music helped free the voice from strictly
narrative-- and strictly tonal--roles. Reaching as far back
as 1942, and as far forward as 1990, this anthology of Cage's
vocal works brilliantly shows the full range of shapes the
composer wanted for musical voice. The title piece is the
most recent and relies heavily on two voices shifting pitches
in a rich, polyphony-tinged flow. So much here is vital Cage:
from his adaptation of phrases from Finnegan's Wake
to Riley reading the "36...Read
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Cage:
Works for Cello / Frances-Marie Uitti |
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Composer:
John
Cage
Performer: Frances-Marie
Uitti
Etcetera (Net) - #2016 / December 8, 1992
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here for more information
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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...Read
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Cage:
Works for Piano & Prepared Piano Vol 1 / Pierce
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Composer:
John
Cage
Conductor: Joshua
Pierce
Performer: Joshua
Pierce, Jay
Clayton
Ensemble: Paul
Price Percussion Ensemble
Wergo (Ger) - #60151 / December 23, 1994
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here for more information
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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...Read
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Singing
Through- Vocal Compositions by John Cage /LaBarbara
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Composer:
John
Cage
Performer: Joan
La Barbara, Leonard
Stein, et al.
New Albion - #35 / December 27, 1990
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here for more information
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Joan LaBarbara does an excellent job of interpreting Cage.
She achieves the perfect mix of seriousness and humor (which
most musicians seem to forget when doing Cage). Especially
amazing are her versions of Eight Whikus (a violin piece transcribed
especially for LaBarbara) and Sonnekus (which includes several
Satie cabaret songs as contrasting sections to Cage's hymn
like dirges). |
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