Search - John Cage, Rob Haskins, Laurel Karlik Sheehan :: John Cage Two2

A late Cagean masterpiece.

Tom Furgas | Youngstown, OH United States | 07/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the last years of his life Cage devoted his compositional energies almost exclusively to "the number pieces", works whose titles give the number of performers. As there were numerous occasions where he composed works for the same number of players (but usually different combinations of instruments, or soloists in the case of the "One" pieces) he would append a superscript number to indicate the sequence of pieces in a particular number catagory. So it is with this work, Two2, for two pianos. All of the "number" pieces also utilize the same compositional type, which consist of a staff with one or a few pitches, with timings before and after indicating a flexible range of times where the material can be played. In the case of works with two or more performers the individual parts are not co-ordinated, but allowed to combine freely, as the individual performers each follow their own timetable, so to speak. This work is a long and beautiful soundscape of sustained pitches weaving in and out together and apart, for over 70 minutes. I would almost call this "Feldmanesque" except that there is no repetition of material, as so often is the case with Feldman (especially late Feldman.) One excellent feature of this recording is that the many sections have their own track index, and it is possible to make this a very long realization by setting your CD player on "shuffle" and "repeat". So far as I can tell there is no indication that Cage meant it to be played in this way, but it is in the spirit of Cage that it could be, and I have played this piece for hours on end in the aforementioned "shuffle" and "repeat" mode, with the result of it being a meditative and seemingly timeless soundscape."