COMPOSERS: Cage
LABELS: BMG Catalyst
WORKS: In a Landscape; Music for Marcel Duchamp; Souvenir; A Valentine Out of Season; Suite for Toy Piano; Dream; Bacchanale; Prelude for Meditation
PERFORMER: Stephen Drury (keyboards)
CATALOGUE NO: 09026 61980 2 DDD
John Cage traced his musical and philosophical ancestry back to Erik Satie, whose inscrutable urbanity is strongly evoked in Dream (1948). But a lot of the music on this disc sounds distinctly oriental and Drury’s pacific approach brings out the Zen in Cage. Bacchanale (1938), his earliest work for prepared piano, is given a lot more life and character on Alan Feinberg’s recent disc on Argo. Here, there’s nothing to frighten the horses. Even Souvenir, a 12-minute organ piece from 1983, is much prettier than most of Cage’s later music. Adrian Jack
Cage: In a Landscape; Music for Marcel Duchamp; Souvenir; A Valentine Out of Season; Suite for Toy Piano; Dream; Bacchanale; Prelude for Meditation
John Cage traced his musical and philosophical ancestry back to Erik Satie, whose inscrutable urbanity is strongly evoked in Dream (1948). But a lot of the music on this disc sounds distinctly oriental and Drury’s pacific approach brings out the Zen in Cage. Bacchanale (1938), his earliest work for prepared piano, is given a lot more life and character on Alan Feinberg’s recent disc on Argo. Here, there’s nothing to frighten the horses. Even Souvenir, a 12-minute organ piece from 1983, is much prettier than most of Cage’s later music. Adrian Jack
Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:13 pm