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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 keeps everything moving without overstressing the rhythms. The bonus disc of Cage speaking isn't very interesting, but it doesn't cost anything or take up any space. --Leslie Gerber
Product Description
CAGE C'te Works For Prepared Piano 3CDs: Sonatas & Interludes;Concerto; Perilous Night; Valentine Out Of Season; Amores. Simonacci, Ars Ludi Lab, Ochestra Galilei/ Paszkowski (Brilliant Cl)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I haven't heard preparations as good as this since John Tilbury's Sonatas and Interludes.
There's a bit too much rubato in Giancarlo Simonacci's Sonatas and Interludes for me but it's still a great performance.
One simply amazing thing is that it's complete, it's cheap and wonderfully presented, in performance and production. Even the playlist works, beginning with Bacchanale and ending with the Concerto for Prepared Piano.
There are compositions here many (most?) of us have read about but not heard.
I'm particularly excited about the recording of Amores which is extremely well done.
You just can't lose with this recording.
There's a bit too much rubato in Giancarlo Simonacci's Sonatas and Interludes for me but it's still a great performance.
One simply amazing thing is that it's complete, it's cheap and wonderfully presented, in performance and production. Even the playlist works, beginning with Bacchanale and ending with the Concerto for Prepared Piano.
There are compositions here many (most?) of us have read about but not heard.
I'm particularly excited about the recording of Amores which is extremely well done.
You just can't lose with this recording.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
The nice thing about John Cage is that, unlike many avant garde and/or minimalist composers, John skillfully makes his material challenging but still MUSICAL. This is a good example. The tinkling toy pianos are, for example, a sound we can identify with, and we aren't jarred or shaken by John's original treatment of them in his work. This may not be his most groundbreaking material, but it's still a treat.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
prepare
13 Mar 2002
Format:Audio CD
John Cage was a student of Arnold Schoenberg, & Schoenberg called Cage "an inventor...of genius." With the music of this cd, Cage could do any caliber of music he wanted & chose to focus it into whatever he wanted. That does take genius, & also great courage, to be so avant-garde. Also magnanimity. The music here, on a prepared piano -- various sizes & girths of rubber & screws, some with bolts, fixed in between the strings -- ranges from the intense, wildly rhythmic to the almost tearfully melodic, all in a way no mind but John Cage's, in all of human history, had braved until then, or even now. Prepare yourself; for this artistic & unique product of his fascination with the aesthetics of eastern religions while exploring the sonic possibilities of prepared piano, what you will need is concentration.... Through careful listening, the visceral flow of this music might convey the aescetic spirituality of John Cage's life when he composed Sonatas & Interludes.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
good recording of a brilliant piece
21 Mar 2003
Format:Audio CD
John Cage's score for this is fantastic -- including rhythmically exciting music & very sparing, ethereal music; & even specific instructions on how to prepare the piano: where on which strings to put the bolts & things (but every time you prepare the piano you have to do it slightly differently). I like Aleck Karis's performance of the piece, but I've heard better performances, & unless you have other recordings & just want this one too, I'd expect that you could find other recordings of this piece that you'd prefer.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Clear and unique interpretation of Cage's most accessible work
1 Feb 2012
Format:Audio CD
Some pieces of music seem to have found their definitive recordings. For example, I can't really conceive of a new recording of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" that could teach me anything about that masterpiece that I haven't already learned from the Nonesuch recording (though I'd love to be proved wrong). With John Cage the situation is very different. As chance is an intrinsic element of the majority of his music, each recording enriches your understanding of a given piece's abstract inner potential.
The "Sonatas and Interludes" are fully notated, down to how to prepare the piano. But that doesn't mean a definitive performance of these pieces exists. No two preparations of the piano will result in the same palette of timbres (not to mention the vast differences in sound between unprepared pianos in the first place). Therefore the emotional content of these pieces is not well-defined - whatever emotions you derive from a certain recording are a mix of John Cage's personal vision, the performer's feelings, and chaotic randomness. On this recording by Julie Steinberg, everything comes together beautifully.
I first heard these works as played by Herbert Henck on an ECM recording. Previously I was a John Cage skeptic, but I hadn't heard much beyond 4'33" and some of his far-out vocal works. Well, Henck's recording immediately sold me that Cage knew all about writing real music. These pieces are little gems of incredibly individual and delicate emotions. There's a video interview of John Cage claiming that he's not interested in writing music that is trying to speak to the listener, tell a story, pretend to be in love, etc. That may be true of his late-career works, but I simply don't believe it when I hear the "Sonatas and Interludes". Every one of these pieces speaks to me on a personal level, suggests a scene.
I've never heard a "generic" recording of these works, but Julie Steinberg's seems particularly idiosyncratic somehow. After hearing recordings by Henck, David Tutor, Giancarlo Cardini and others, I was surprised at how many new details were revealed in Steinberg's very clear rendition. She listens to the chance mixtures of timbre very attentively, and reacts as a consummate artist would, to bring out as much emotion as possible from her one-of-a-kind configuration of piano, room, and so forth. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of John Cage's score, but Steinberg seems to take somewhat greater liberties with rhythm than most - either that, or she actually plays them accurately while others approximate. Whichever the case is, the results work. The timing of some of her attacks almost make me leap out of my seat.
If you regard John Cage as kind of a weirdo but think there might be something to his ideas, please take a chance* with this or some other recording of the "Sonatas and Interludes".
*No, I couldn't resist this little pun.
The "Sonatas and Interludes" are fully notated, down to how to prepare the piano. But that doesn't mean a definitive performance of these pieces exists. No two preparations of the piano will result in the same palette of timbres (not to mention the vast differences in sound between unprepared pianos in the first place). Therefore the emotional content of these pieces is not well-defined - whatever emotions you derive from a certain recording are a mix of John Cage's personal vision, the performer's feelings, and chaotic randomness. On this recording by Julie Steinberg, everything comes together beautifully.
I first heard these works as played by Herbert Henck on an ECM recording. Previously I was a John Cage skeptic, but I hadn't heard much beyond 4'33" and some of his far-out vocal works. Well, Henck's recording immediately sold me that Cage knew all about writing real music. These pieces are little gems of incredibly individual and delicate emotions. There's a video interview of John Cage claiming that he's not interested in writing music that is trying to speak to the listener, tell a story, pretend to be in love, etc. That may be true of his late-career works, but I simply don't believe it when I hear the "Sonatas and Interludes". Every one of these pieces speaks to me on a personal level, suggests a scene.
I've never heard a "generic" recording of these works, but Julie Steinberg's seems particularly idiosyncratic somehow. After hearing recordings by Henck, David Tutor, Giancarlo Cardini and others, I was surprised at how many new details were revealed in Steinberg's very clear rendition. She listens to the chance mixtures of timbre very attentively, and reacts as a consummate artist would, to bring out as much emotion as possible from her one-of-a-kind configuration of piano, room, and so forth. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of John Cage's score, but Steinberg seems to take somewhat greater liberties with rhythm than most - either that, or she actually plays them accurately while others approximate. Whichever the case is, the results work. The timing of some of her attacks almost make me leap out of my seat.
If you regard John Cage as kind of a weirdo but think there might be something to his ideas, please take a chance* with this or some other recording of the "Sonatas and Interludes".
*No, I couldn't resist this little pun.
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