John Cage: Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano

This celebratory 2-disc special edition features Cage's most visionary masterpiece, Sonatas and Interludes performed by pianist Aleck Karis, as well as a free-bonus-disc that brings us to an intimate California living room, where Cage converses and gives a reading of his poem-cum-manifesto, Composition in Retrospect. 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 keeps everything moving without overstressing the rhythms.

Tracklist

CD 1
1. Sonata No. 1
2. Sonata No. 2
3. Sonata No. 3
4. Sonata No. 4
5. Interlude No. 1
6. Sonata No. 5
7. Sonata No. 6
8. Sonata No. 7
9. Sonata No. 8
10. Interlude No. 2
11. Interlude No. 3
12. Sonata No. 9
13. Sonata No. 10
14. Sonata No. 11
15. Sonata No. 12
16. Interlude No. 4
17. Sonata No. 13
18. Sonata No. 14
19. Sonata No. 15
20. Sonata No. 16

CD 2
21. 'Spoken-Compositions In Retrospect' (1981)

Aleck Karis, Prepared Piano
Bridge 9081

John Cage is one of the giants of 20th century contemporary music. His composing, performing and philosophy are intertwined, and Cage has influenced innumerable composers and performers in classical, jazz and rock music. Cage has made a life's work out of music-as-sound and sound-as-music. This disc is a re-release of two albums from the mid-'60s of pieces Cage wrote in the late 1930s. Yuji Takahashi (himself a composer) plays "sonatas" for "prepared piano," an innovation by either Cage or Henry Cowell, where the piano has small objects inserted within to alter the sound. These pieces are short and sparse, with the piano producing tones similar to an mbira (African thumb piano) or a koto. The music is reminiscent of Erik Satie's piano music, but darker and more percussive, with a haunting, questing quality. Cage, with his (then) radical conceptions, "liberated" the piano from all the established notions of how it should sound, and open it―and music in general―to limitless possibilities.

Yuji Takahashi, piano
Denon 7673

Written in 1946-48 for prepared piano and recorded in 1975 by Joshua Pierce, Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano by John Cage (WER 60156-50) represents the culmination of his work with the solo prepared piano, which had been his musical invention a decade before. Essentially, into the bed of piano strings he put such objects as large wooden screws, bolts of various sizes, pieces of plastic and rubber. In short, a panoply of devices were used that forever transformed the sounds of the ordinary piano strings, which showed his colleagues that Cage should not only be remembered as an important composer, but as a renowned inventor as well.

Joshua Pierce, Piano
WERGO 60151-50