Search - Cage :: Cage: Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Atlas Eclipticalis

All primary Cage works by an experienced Cager

04/13/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Petr Kotik is a devoted Cage interpreter. He has been performing this music for decades now and we have two monumental examples. The "Concert for Piano" dates from the late Fifties, the time of the high avant-garde with non-synchronicity, indeterminate means, experimentation, graphic notation,just plain non-political subversion. Cage had indentified some 40 ways of rolling,playing,arpeggiation,cluster construction,register leaps, almost encyclopedic. The orchestra plays their own solos, in fact you can simply play an orchestral part (anyone of them) as a self-contained solo jettisoning the heroic piano non-soloist. "Atlas Eclipticalis" a few years later I always found more compelling. There are better performances of it and Cage whatever he did seems to animate his performers. Some nirvana or spirit that comes through the graphic page into the performers head seems to have served this piece well. "Winter Music" as well, for one to twenty pianists is a primary contribution to multiple piano literature, which has served the avant-garde well when you think of all the important (neglected) works Boulez,Stockhausen Pousseur,Zimmermann,Feldman,Brown,Bolcom,Messiaen,Rzewski,Cardew all have important works for two pianos."