John Cage: Works for Cello / Lecture on Nothing [Import]

Frances-Marie Uitti (Artist, Performer), John Cage (Composer), None (Conductor) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Frances-Marie Uitti
• Conductor: None
• Composer: John Cage
• Audio CD (March 22, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: Et'Cetera
• ASIN: B0000000RI
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,114,840 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Etudes Boreales I-IV, for piano: Movement 1

2. Etudes Boreales I-IV, for piano: Movement 2

3. Etudes Boreales I-IV, for piano: Movement 3

4. Etudes Boreales I-IV, for piano: Movement 4

5. 26'1.1499', for a string player

6. Concert, for piano & orchestra, for piano & 13 other instruments in any combination: Solo for Cello

Disc: 2

1. Variations I, for any number of players & any sound producing means: version for multiple celli

2. Variations II, for any number of players & any sound producing means

3. Variations III, for any number of people performing any actions

4. A Dip in the Lake: 10 Quicksteps, 61 Waltzes, and 56 Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, for indeterminate forces: Ten Quicksteps

5. A Dip in the Lake: 10 Quicksteps, 61 Waltzes, and 56 Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, for indeterminate forces: Sixty One Waltzes

6. A Dip in the Lake: 10 Quicksteps, 61 Waltzes, and 56 Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, for indeterminate forces: Fifty Six Marches

7. Lecture on Nothing, for speaker

Editorial Reviews

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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Miss This Lecture!, November 20, 2000

By 

Samuel D. Burns (Charleston, SC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Cage: Works for Cello / Lecture on Nothing (Audio CD)

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!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cascades and simplicity meet a real committed virtuoso, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: John Cage: Works for Cello / Lecture on Nothing (Audio CD)

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.