Related
Items
|
 • Buy this item from our featured Merchant - Featured Price: $8.99
 |
Product Reviews:
Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: I defer to Mr. White, however I like this disc
Comments: Edward Wright (see above review) knows more about this stuff than I do. I am impressed that he has heard not one, not two, not three, however *four* different versions of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes!! I thought I was doing great to hear just this one.
I have for a long time been interested in Cage as a sort of iconoclast and philosopher of sorts, so I purchased this up at the great old Naxos bargain price, brought it home, listened to the 1st few pieces, and said, "What is this crap?"
however being no complete musical moron, I figured the idea of the music would grow on me, and grow on me it did. Lately, I want to hear this CD--not my Schubert or Beethoven--all the time. What initially sounded random and chaotic now seems magical. This music is by and large more rhythm and texture based than harmony based. It's tough music. I wonder what Ives would have thought of it (he never heard it, as far as I know).
When I hear Cage, I am proud to be an American. The same goes for when I hear Ives.
I like this whole CD, however my favorite piece is, now at least, probably the Second Interlude, especially the last minute or so of it. It has a droning, clocklike, dreamy quality to it, however there might also be a little menace there as well, like the soundtrack to a slightly threatening dream. Much of this is, in fact, rather dreamlike.
This CD is positively not conventional Western music. The prepared piano highlights the percussive quality of the instrument (see Sonata 5), and the music seldom repeats itself thematically. It is brimming with ideas, however these are not ideas that eone will find all that interesting.
|
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: A groundbreaking concept for the time however somewhat flat...
Comments: John Cage was obviously both a musical visionary and renegade. almost all of his key musical ideas and philosophy completely challenged and even shatttered3centuries of musical development. The idea of literally destroying a piano would have seemed blasphemous to the great classical composers, however Cage realised that music need not be so strict and constricting. The prepared piano was a simple however groundbreaking idea in its time, however today this music feels pointless and the listener is left feeling detached and uninspired. This release is probably best listened to for analytical purposes only. |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: strange, however rewarding
Comments: I arrived at this cd coming from the angle of electronic (dance) music. I can stand quite a bit of experiment, and I like music that sounds like machines. Where the music on this cd is not so machine like, it does have the same clinical, at times nearly desolate feel. The way the composer makes that feeling is rather unique i'd say. The feeling reminds me of the electronic music by the likes of frank bretschneider and some other mille-plateaux artists, even though the means of performance are rather different. It's a feeling that not eone likes. And it's a feeling for special occasions. I enjoy this cd almost all on traintrips early in the morning. Should say that I can hardly ever listen the cd untill the end. That's just too much. however I have experienced some of those magical listening moments when listening to this cd.
So, it may not be for eone, it may not be for anytime, however I do endorse trying it. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Cage has a revolution with this work.
Comments: John Cage has written his best pieces for prepared piano during 1946-1948,when he composed the sonatas and interludes for this particular genious instrument.His approach to the rythmic structure instead of the harmonic one,is shooting excellent results,which are interesting to the ear,and simply creating something new,enjoyful.Another thing no1did before Cage until this work,is putting inside the music Zen Buddhism and Hinduism influences-the music remindes us of these eastern culture well-and only for the best.The result is amazing,feeding us with wonder and excitement.
The work may also remind you modern-like dance tythms,and it is obvious,fore Cage has worked during that period as the director for the Merce Cunningham ballet(The works he had written for the Cunnigham ballet are some of his best).
The percussion effects produced by the prepared piano are wonderful,,and unbelivable,hearing a whole percussion orchestra,and sometimes you may want to shake your hooks with these maccabre effects.
A classical John Cage work from his earlier years,worth of ething in order to hear how wonderful and interesting and new it sounds,even until today.
The performance here by Boris Berman is excellent and quite assartive-I like it much.He honestly understands The music of Cage,though sometimes I feel he lack the excitement of these works.All by all,still an excellent performance,and a interesting conrtol over the preapred piano. |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: An unexceptional performance of an important early Cage work
Comments: John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes have long been1of his almost all popular works (if popular means anything in the case of Cage). They are written for a piano prepared by inserting various objects onto the piano strings so as to partially dampen the sound in a variety of different ways. This preparation results in the piano becoming alalmost all a one-man percussion orchestra (the comparison to Indonesian gamelan is useful, if oversimplistic). In addition, when the piano is prepared as Cage requests, each note has its own distinctive timbre as well as pitch, thus creating a link between these2musical elements.The Sonatas and Interludes were inspired by Cage's study of Hindu aesthetics as discussed by Ananda Coomaraswamy, and were an attempt to make music based around the Hindu theory of the9emotions (the "white" emotions of heroism, eroticism, mirth and wonder and the "black" emotions of fear, anger, sorrow and disgust, all tending towards the almost all important emotion, tranquility). The result was a collection of20 single-movement pieces, lasting something over an hour in complete performances. The16 sonatas are almost allly based on repetitive rhythms and brief, fragmentary modal melodies, while the4interludes tend to be rather more rhythmically varied than the sonatas. There have been many recordings made of this set of works (the invaluable John Cage discography at http://www.johncage.info lists no fewer than 20 rival recordings), and it would be foolish to claim that Boris Berman's matches up to the best of them (Karis, Schleiermacher, Goldstein and Henck all have prior claims on the listener). In particular, Berman occasionally rushes the music, disturbing the intended tranquil feel, and his Russian-sounding espressivo playing in some of the sonatas seems distinctly at odds with Cage's aesthetic. I wonder if this recording was not made too soon, as Berman's second bite at the Cage cherry (a collection of miscellaneous prepared piano pieces recorded a year later and also available on Naxos), displays a distinctly greater empathy for the idiom. |
|
