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Cage: Works for Two Keyboards, Vol. 2

Pascal Meyer (Artist), Xenia Pestova (Artist), Pestova/Meyer Piano Duo (Artist), Format: Audio CD
4 out of 5 stars 3 customer reviews
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Audio CD, April 29, 2014
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  • Sample this album Artist (Sample)
1
30
Music for Two
29:23
Album Only
2
30
3 Dances: No. 1. -
6:08
Play in Library $0.89
 
3
30
3 Dances: No. 2. -
6:31
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4
30
3 Dances: No. 3. -
10:09
Album Only

Product Details

  • Conductor: __
  • Composer: Cage
  • Audio CD (April 29, 2014)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Label: Naxos American Classics
  • ASIN: B00IOUPLF2
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #307,231 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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4.0 out of 5 starsA Mixed Bag
By Digital Chips on May 14, 2014
Format: Audio CD
John Cage's music can be difficult to listen to. And many times, that's the point. Cage wanted audiences to be aware of the unspoken assumptions about what music was and how it should be listened to -- or viewed. There's often a strong visual element in his work. Which, I think, is the problem I had with "Music for Two."

It's part of his "Music for ___" series. Cage wrote a part for every instrument, and the composition/performance becomes whatever the combination of instruments are at the time. In this case, it's two prepared pianos. The problem for me is that there's just not a lot going on aurally. I suspect seeing the performances interact and the visual cues provided by them moving from one part of the piano to the other would give me a much richer experience. Musically, it sounds like about five minutes of material spread over a 29-minute track.

By contrast, "Three Dances" more than justified the price of admission. This is Cage at his finest. The prepared pianos sound like sophisticated electronics or exotic percussion instruments, which make these 1945 works seem as if they could have been written yesterday. And Cage's complex rhythmic patterns keep things hopping. This isn't the metronomic regularity of minimalism. Rather, these dances crackle and explode unpredicitably, yet all the while simmering with energy that can only sometimes be contained.

Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer perform these works with amazing precision and obvious relish, even if they couldn't quite sell me on the "Music for Two." That track, I'd recommend only to Cage completists. "Three Dances," though, are for everyone. Those pieces (and the Pestova/Meyer Piano Duo's performance) rock.
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4.0 out of 5 starsVery interesting at least, even now
By Daniel R. Coombs on May 5, 2014
Format: Audio CD
The works for prepared piano by John Cage have always been niche curiosities. Virtually all of Cage's music remains controversial and is still seen as the product of a highly creative and iconoclastic personality writing during some of the country's most turbulent times. However, his many, many piano works do also remain as some of Cage's most "accessible" and easy to listen to scores. This is a very well done volume two of these pieces by the very talented and knowledgeable Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer. The Music for Two is the more abstract and static of these two works. It moves very slowly and in hard to anticipate fashion. There are plenty moments of silence - which, for Cage, was a valid and necessary compositional tool - and the chords are at times punctuated utterances and at other times are drawn out through pedals and through bowed interior. The piece is structured aurally vertically but one has to really study Cage to see the horizontal implication. It is a very zen-like sparse sounding work but one that you may find quite intriguing. Cage's Three Dances for prepared pianos is a whole different matter. There is ample forward momentum here and, thanks to Cage's very precise instructions for the prepared interior - which include what types of materials and hardware and even what node on what string to place the objects - the sound is like a Gamelan ensemble. I have always these works among Cage's most interesting and most thought provoking. Cage has created a template score "Music for...." over 1984-1987 and intended the score to be playable as almost any combination of instruments in almost any amount. His "Dances" are part of a series of works that intentionally echo the music of various cultures and are, therefore, sort of inherently captivating.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsTwo Pioneering Works for Two
By Dr. Debra Jan Bibel TOP 500 REVIEWER on May 3, 2014
Format: Audio CD
When thinking about classical composers who developed a body of instruments for their new timbre, Harry Partch and Lou Harrison come to mind, but when regarding the orchestral nature of the piano, John Cage and his various preparations must, of course, be included. Stick tacks on the felt hammers and, lo!, a quasi harpsichord; use blocks and pieces of metal for other percussive effects and a piano can be transformed into a gamelan -- whose Western-adapted music was under development in California when Cage was in residence. In the continuing series by Naxos of Cage's compositions for piano, this second volume for two keyboards offers two extensive works separated by four decades. His Three Dances from 1945 were from his pioneering days and was his first musician-commissioned work. Thirty-six keys of each piano were fitted with bolts, nuts, screws, pennies, and rubber and plastic pieces. In a fast, slow, frenetic presto movement series, the rhythmic phrasing of normal keys and pitched and unpitched modified tones creates a wild, dramatic but very abstract dance series suggestive of being somewhat Eastern or diffused tribal. [Compared to my 30-year old recording of this work by Pierce and Jonas on Wergo, the new performance by Pestova and Meyer makes the dances truly come alive, thanks to better audio engineering for increased clarity but also for seemingly greater deliberation, indicated by different timing: here, the first movement is taken over a minute longer and the third section is 2.5 minutes longer.]

These difficult works were lead by the 30-minute Music for Two, composed in the mid 1980s. Cage over the interim period had paid more attention to the space between the notes and silences, and anticipations within a greater rhythmic structure opened new vistas for him.Read more ›
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