Customer Reviews

John Cage - The Seasons / Leng Tan, Russell Davies, et al

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How times change! Cage seems to have gone from being regarded in some circles as anti-musical to being regarded as a classic. This CD concentrates, with one exception on music written in the late 40's, early 50's, just on the cusp of when he moved into his 'aesthetic of non-intention', or techniques of chance. He moved on from a beguiling sound world indeed: 'The Seasons' has real melodic appeal, try the Spring movement (track 3) - or relish the enigmatic and somewhat protean gestures of the Concerto for Prepared Piano, which seems to become more disembodied as it progresses. The Suite for Toy Piano is ingenious, and a great idea to follow it with contemporary Lou Harrison's orchestration of it, which makes it sound very beefy indeed: a delicious contrast. My personal jury is still out on the one late piece, dating from Cage's last year: Seventy-Four, 2 versions of which are recorded here. It is indeterminate, with parts allotted to just high and low instruments. It has a floating and ethereal quality, certainly, but I miss the more bracing and personal invention of the early pieces, which sound more revolutionary. Exemplary performances and vivid recording: a very stimulating anthology.

I have been recently revisiting the work of John Cage, from the early experiments with timbre and rhythm, through his aleatoric period and beyond. While at one time I would have dismissed him as a poser...or a philosopher at best, now I am more and more convinced of his singular genius. This genius is beautifully represented on this amazing CD with Magaret Leng Tan and Denniss Russell Davis. Nearly every phrase in the composer's career is represented.

The earliest music on the disc is the ballet score for The Seasons. This is an amazing work...it almost sounds like one of the Sonatas and Interludes orchestrated. Cage has moments of almost Stravinskian clarity, oriental filligree and yet the work is dominated most by beautifully proportioned juxtapositions of sound blocks. It is a haunting and mesmerizing work. As is the suite for Toy piano, presented both in it's original form and orchestrated by Lou Harrison. Cage manages to create a lush and elaborate rhythmic scheme out of very limited means.

The Concerto show Cage moving into his next phase of work. The language is more abstract and dissonant...almost like Webern. In fact, this is a transition work into Cage's later aleatoric style. The third movement contains some of Cage's first forays into chance procedures. The result it intensely colorful, dramatic, and fascinating.

The two other pieces on the disc are two realizations of 73, one of Cage's computer generated number pieces, which dominated the last few years of his life. 73 refers to the number of instrumentalists in the piece. There is not score to the work. Each instrumentalist is given a series of notated events and a time frame for the events. Timbre, effects, and timing are left up to the performer to some extent. 73 is particularly interesting in that there are only two series of events split between orchestra members...one series for higher instruments and one for lower instruments. The result is a work which slowly evolves from droning note to droning note...almost resembling the late work of Nono or Scelsi. Both versions of the piece are hypnotic.

Margaret Leng Tan is a marvelous pianist, particularly in contemporary repertoire. And Russell Davies conducts with clarity and an ear for balance. If you've been afraid of Cage, this is the disc to get. The sound world is marvelous.

John Cage worked in collaboration with Margaret Leng Tan (toy pf.) for several times. Tan is so good and successful at expressing Cage's magical world. "The Seasons" was originaly piano solo number and translated into orchestra version here. Like Vivaldi's (or Piazzolla's) 'Four Seasons', the color of the music differ from piece to piece. It really excited my imagination. "Concerto for Prepared Piano(1951)" and "Suite for Toy Piano (1948)" (Tan's second recording) are not avant-garde anymore, they can come into center in classical music scene. "Seventy-four" (which Cage wrote for American Composer Orchestra in 1992) is rather new piece and anyone who loves Part, Gorecki or Tavener will love this.

For John Cage, an orchestra was an assembly of musicians playing traditional sound-making instruments, not the grand ensemble required by Mahler to produce waves of well-tempered orchestrations, & Cage conceptualized accordingly. So while the Concerto may seem not quite a concerto, the clusters, open spaces, punctuations, prepared piano sounds do indeed showcase the performers concerto-style. The composition also achieves a sense of motionless that is kin to Satie. The Suite for Toy Piano makes an even stronger connection to the Sage of Arceuil.

This is a superb collection. Margaret Leng Tang brings just the right combination of committment, detachment & wit to the music. Dennis Russell Davies stays out of the way as much as he can, allowing whatever happens next to happen next. The players are enjoying themselves - Cage's scores are realized well only when everyone cooperates and has a good time. You will, too.

Bob Rixon

John Cage (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was 'an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker' and for those who have not embraced the musical gifts of this great man, this CD is probably the finest place to start. The spectrum of works here range from early ones to his last piece. The recorded sound here is very fine and the contributions from the patient and detail-oriented conductor Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composers Orchestra are exemplary. There are two versions of the opening work 'Seventy-Four' (Version I and Version II) and both are played with amazing sensitivity to the composer's demands: "Orchestral parts without score to be played with video clock without conductor. Single notes in flexible time-brackets...There should be the usual imperfection of tuning perhaps slightly exaggerated so that the music is microtonal..." What results is a seemingly endless continuation of pulses of sound of various timbres that give the atmosphere of sitting alone in a fogged in lighthouse, surrounded by complex but accessible emotions.

'The Seasons, Ballet in One Act' is a wonderful little work that changes each of the four seasons with the humor and subtle quotations from other composers. This is followed by the demanding and complex 'Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra', the fine soloist being Margaret Leng Tan, who seems so at ease with the demands as to make this work almost immediately accessible to the novice. There are then two versions of the delightful 'Suite for Toy Piano' which Leng Tan actually opts for playing on a toy piano (she is given the option of using a regular piano by the composer), and this work written solely for the white keys on the keyboard is full of fun and of amazing variations despite the limits the composer imposed on the work! The orchestral version is the work of Lou Harrison - and sounds much more like Harrison than Cage.

In all this is a splendid recording, not only in the curated selection of pieces to be performed, but also in the quality of the performances themselves. Grady Harp, September 10

I have always been among those who have viewed John Cage as, perhaps, a great artist, but not really a composer. And then releases like this come along to seriously threaten to undermine that assessment (which makes me at least notionally able to understand why some people do not like this disc as well). For there is no doubt that the works here are "real" music - very good, real music, in fact.

The title-piece, The Seasons, is a relatively early work which reveals the influences of Stravinsky. It is still recognizably Cage, however, but Cage at his most lyrical and poetic. It is a harmonically rather static work which emphasizes the cyclical nature of the seasons at the expense of a forward-driven narrative, but where nuanced colors create wonderfully subtly shifting atmospheres. The Concerto for prepared piano stems from the same period and displays many of the same qualities - relatively static but subtly shifting harmonies creating a delicate fabric of tone colors, but also looking forward to the later Cage more than The Seasons. Both are works which fortunately can be appreciated in complete independence of Cage's obsession with the Eastern philosophy and mysticism that inspired them.

Seventy-Four comes in two version, the last from just short time before the composers death. This is a seamless tapestry of sounds slowly moving in two overlapping parts, this time clearly inspired by Buddhism and more avant-gardish sounding than the previously mentioned pieces. The Suite for Toy piano stems from the time of The Seasons again and is a remarkable piece, exploiting the limited resources and timbres of the Toy Piano more fully than one should have thought possible - with almost memorable tunes - though in this work I am less convinced that the performance by Margaret Leng Tan is as ideal as in the other works; it sounds a tad rhythmically vague and insecure. And of course, Lou Harrison had to come along and orchestrate it, which seems to violate the whole idea behind it but works surprisingly well and is, against all odds, really able to capture the impact of the original (at an abstract level, at least).

Performances, with the possible exception of the Suite for toy piano, are uniformly excellent (I think) and truly manage to realizes the subtleties and fragility of these soundscapes. Recommended to anyone curious about Cage, particularly those who up until now have found his music rather unapproachable.

This is a collection of bad pieces by a great composer, for those who like his bad pieces. Most of Cage's work before "Music of Changes" is just cross-over entertainment (with some "exceptional exceptions"), and just for this reason it has a good selling potential today. With exception of "Seventy-four" all the pieces in this CD come from this period (the "Concerto for Prepared Piano" is a transition work). I see Cage basically as a composer of solo keyboard or chamber music, and this CD shows irrefutably that he could not handle an orchestra. "The Seasons" is much better in the original keyboard version, and "Seventy-four" could as well be played by the audience - that would be a great experiment! The "Suite for Toy Piano" is good enough as a satire and the author recommended that it should be played on a toy piano, or on a ordinary instrument - as I see (listen to) it orchestrating such a piece is rather an insult than a homage to the composer. I really did not like this CD. Don't buy it! Have another Cage instead, like "Music of Changes" played by Herbert Henck (WERGO), or Joan LaBarbera's beautiful "Singing Through John Cage" (New Albion).