Cage Edition 13: The Piano Works 1
John Cage

(1912-92)

mode 47

Cage Edition 13: The Piano Works 1

$45.00

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mode 47 John CAGE, Vol.13: Piano Works 1 – Music for Two; One; One5; Music Walk — Stephen Drury.

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Cage Edition 13: The Piano Works 1

Stephen Drury, piano

1. MUSIC FOR TWO (1985) *
for two pianos

2. ONE  (1987) *

3. ONE5  (1990)
for piano solo

4. MUSIC WALK  (1958)*
for one or more pianists, at a single piano,
using also radio and/or recordings

* First recordings

New music specialist Stephen Drury’s first of a series of piano recordings for Mode mixes some of Cage’s later works withhis 1958 Music Walk.

From his earliest works, Cage searched for ways to free sounds to exist independently of each other, emphasizing the uniqueness of each sound –struggling to avoid the idea of their relationships, and ultimately, melody. But hearing this collection brings to mind Christian Wolff’s comment to Cage that “nomatter what we do, it ends up being melodic”. The various and unrelated sounds in Music for Two, One and Music Walk subversively conspire to create anew kind of melody, but in a greatly distended time scale. Perhaps only in One5, Cage’s last work for piano, does he manage to free himself frommelody once and for all — its sparseness is a work of commanding stillness.

Music for Two achieves its unique sound by producing sustained pitches from the piano strings “bowed” with nylon fishing line.

Music Walk, dating about forty years earlier, consists of a graphically notated score with transparent overlays, allowing the performer(s) to independentlycreate their parts which call for sounds to be produced in and around the piano, on radios, or on auxiliary instruments (including their own voices). The ensuingtraffic of sounds results in a cooperative piece of theater.