CAGE : As it is (Alexei Lubimov · Natalia Pschenitschnikova) (2012) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

Released as part of the 2012 celebration of John Cage's centennial, this ECM New Series album presents pieces for piano, prepared piano, and voice that represent the lyrical side of the composer. While many of Cage's pieces are accessible for their simplicity and delicacy, these quiet piano reveries and vocal settings of texts by James Joyce, e.e. cummings, and Gertrude Stein are especially easy to approach for their quiet music, soft sounds, and hypnotic melodies and patterns. The performances by pianist Alexei Lubimov and singer Natalia Pschenitschnikova are fully in accord with Cage's methods, and their self-effacing introspection contribute greatly to this disc's feelings of anonymity and secrecy. The words of The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, Experiences No. 2, Three Songs, Five Songs, and Nowth upon nacht tend to blur in the highly resonant recording space, and Pschenitschnikova's thick accent tends to obscure the words sufficiently to create dreamlike performances that can only be followed with the help of the booklet. In contrast, Lubimov's keyboard performances are quite clear, clean, and precise, and the slight increase of volume is almost surprising when compared with the sotto voce quality of the songs. Yet listeners will easily find a volume level that's suitable for home listening, which is perhaps the best way to appreciate the haunting subtlety of these pieces. Blair Sanderson
John Cage (1912 – 1992)
1. Dream
2. The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
3. The Unavailable Memory of
4. A Flower
5. Music for Marcel Duchamp
6. Experiences No.2
7. A Room
8-10. Three Songs
11-12. Two Pieces for Piano
13-17. Five Songs
18 Prelude for Meditation
19. She is Asleep
20. Nowth upon nacht
21. Dream, var.

Alexei Lubimov : Piano, Prepared Piano
Natalia Pschenitschnikova : Voice

ARDITTI STRING QUARTET - U.S.A. (1994) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Conlon Nancarrow : String Quartet N°1    (10:55)

Elliott Carter : Elegy    (3:39)

Charles Ives : Scherzo    (1:30)

Jay Alan Yim :    Autumn Rhythm    16:50

Morton Feldman : Structures    (6:29)

Alvin Lucier : Fragments    7:22

La Monte Young : On Remembering A Naiad    (6:23)

John Cage : Four    20:00

Arditti String Quartet :
Cello – Rohan de Saram
Viola – Garth Knox
Violin – David Alberman, Irvine Arditti

Gidon Kremer & Naoko Yoshino - Insomnia (1999) FLAC (tracks), lossless

This is a handsome-looking compact disc release, with strikingly muted graphics in cool purple tones, featuring Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and Japanese harpist Naoko Yoshina. Here the pretty graphics go a little too far: the buyer finds no listing of compositions on the outside of the package and has no way of knowing what is played aside from a bare mention of the names of the 11 composers featured. That's where the All Classical Guide comes in. The works were all written in the twentieth century. They are: Michio Miyagi's Haru no umi (Ocean in Spring, a calming, melodic piece); Kaija Saariaho's Nocturne for violin solo (a somewhat avant-garde coloristic piece); Toru Takemitsu's Stanza II for harp and tape (also pretty far out and very Japanese-sounding); Yuji Takahashi's Insomnia for violin, voices, and kugo (strange, but oddly soothing); a movement from Satie's Le fils des étoiles as arranged by Takahashi (austere); Jean Françaix's Five Little Duets (100 percent charming); the Étude for violin from Richard Strauss's Daphne (also charming); Six Melodies by John Cage (simple and pleasant); Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel (even simpler and not startling); Nino Rota's love theme from The Godfather (you know this one); and the final movement from Schnittke's Suite in the Old Style (gently Classical except for one deliberately horrendous dissonance). So there you have the emotional progression of this carefully planned album. Much of it could cure insomnia; three or four pieces could cause it. The mood is nocturnal throughout. The recording was made in 1996 in Kioi Hall, Tokyo, with Wilhelm Hellweg as producer and engineer. It completely succeeds in what was intended; the microphones are close enough to Kremer that bowing sounds are very evident, but apparently only when the producer wants them to be.  by Joseph Stevenson 

All tracks

Harp – Naoko Yoshino
Violin – Gidon Kremer

CIKADA STRING QUARTET - In due tempi (2005) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 1 (1997) 3CD / APE (image+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 2 (1998) 2CD / APE (image+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 3 (1998) APE (image+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 4 (1999) 2CD / Mp3

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 5 (Two Pianos) 2000 / 2CD / APE (image+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 6 (2001) 2CD / FLAC (tracks), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 7 (2001) APE (image+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 8 (2002) APE (image+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 9 (Etudes Australes) 2002 / 3CD / FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

A primary tenet in John Cage's philosophy lay in his desire to disengage his ego from the process of composition, and many of his works demonstrate his ingenuity in devising means of accomplishing that goal. In his Études australes, and in several other works from the 1970s, he lay starmaps over staff paper and let the location of stars and their relative spatial relationships determine pitches and their relative temporal relationships. The wide placement of the pitches over the keyboard makes it a work that does not fall easily under the fingers under any circumstances, but Cage's instructions make it even more demanding: the score is written on four staves, the top two (approximately the top half of the keyboard) for the right hand, and the bottom two staves (approximately the bottom half of the keyboard) for the left, with the stipulation that the hands not "help" each other by switching to each other's staves for especially wide leaps. That requirement makes it a piece of ferocious difficulty, an element that's not captured by an audio recording in which the listener cannot see the athleticism and virtuosity that's required to pull it off.

In each of its 32 movements, Cage has the pianist depress several keys with rubber wedges so their strings resonate throughout, adding a textural layer of spectral haze. He used the I Ching to determine some musical parameters, but left a significant number of details to the discretion of the performer, including tempos, dynamics, and articulations. This latitude allows for remarkably diverse range of interpretations, particularly in the length of the performances. The recorded versions range from 112 minutes (Claudio Crismani) to 260 minutes (Sabine Liebner). Steffen Schleiermacher's 2002 recording, at 204 minutes, splits the difference, but is closer to the long side. Liebner reasoned that the spatial relations of the star maps should be mirrored precisely in the temporal relationships of the music, so in her version each page of the score lasts precisely the same length, and the result is a performance with little differentiation between movements. Schleiermacher is sensitive to the spatial implications of the score layout, but is not as strictly bound by it; his movements range from four to eight minutes, with discernible variety in the character of the movements. The performance is notable for Schleiermacher's embrace of the composer's assumption that the pianist will use the openness if the notation to personally discover and convey meaning and beauty in the music's execution. MDG unprocessed sound is typically immaculate and detailed but also warmly realistic. A caveat is that the resonating strings are often barely, if at all audible, so the overall impact of the recording misses some of the color and sonic mystery Cage built into the piece. by Stephen Eddins   

JOHN CAGE : Complete Piano Music Vol. 10 (2002) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

JOHN CAGE Meets SUN RA [1987]

Due to variety and musicality, Sun Ra heavily defeats John Cage on the performance. He opens the concert with a huge, furious, dissonant keyboard performance. The crowd cheers wildly and the spacey synthesizer sounds jump all around the range of the instrument and jump around in styles just as quickly. Elements of jazz flow in and suddenly a huge, orchestral sounding chord will overpower the recording instrument. The synth voices change frequently from a typical square lead voice to a bell sound to a synthesized voice. Sun Ra uses his range of voices perfectly, creating a heavy, metallic sound at some points which makes an even more frenzied sound to the already insane harmonic structure. He manages to jump from the most beautiful chords to the most dissonance in a matter of seconds. His first appearance goes on for 7 and a half minutes, garnering tumultuous applause from the audience. He later closes out the first half of the performance with a much more eastern tinged movement. Just when his playing couldn’t get any darker, he spends most of the second half making ambient, creepy noises. Much in the manner of the Mars Volta, he goes off without any sense of time or rhythm, creating whatever comes to mind. However, he lets the ambience slowly build into huge, crashing chords of either beauty or dissonance. Everything is going somewhere.

John Cage is just the opposite. His performance is much simpler. He merely steps up to a microphone and makes strange vocal noises. Cage’s voice sounds akin to an aging Johnny Cash. However, Cage never steps over saying more than 3 or 4 syllables at a time. He takes minute breaks before starting another few indistinguishable syllables. Of course, he relies on his “chance music” theory to get away with the minutes of silence. Sure, it’s a profound and intriguing idea, but it just gets old after a few minutes, especially when the recording buzzes in the background due to the quality. In truth, Cage is reciting excerpts from one of his poems in some strange language, known as Empty Words IV. However, who knows what he is saying? Luckily, Sun Ra saves the performance on the second half by filling in where Cage leaves silence. He fills with light, dainty keyboard lines way up high on the keys. He lets Cage have the show, not doing much of anything, but neither Cage still does less than Sun Ra. Cage proves a better composer and philosopher than a performer. Regardless, the crowd eats everything up, probably being mostly young, profound college kids themselves.

Side A:
John Cage Meets Sun Ra (Cage-Ra)
Side B:
John Cage Meets Sun Ra (Cage-Ra) (cont.)

Alternates performances by Sun Ra-Yamaha DX-7; and John Cage-voc. Sideshows by the Sea, Coney Island, NY, 6/8/86. [Album jacket plus Andrejko]

Rarely heard live recording of a John Cage and Sun Ra performance from 1986. It was recorded at Sideshows by the Sea, the last surviving freak show along the Coney Island boardwalk. A carnival barker and a snake lady hawked the show outside and there was free pizza served, too. Can you imagine?!?! This concert took place on June 8th and pressed as a limited edition LP the following year. by Tyler Fisher writes on Sputnik Music

 John Cage Meets Sun Ra

]1987] Meltdown MPA-1 / LP / FLAC / scans

O Púbis da Rosa

AKI TAKAHASHI – Piano Space = 高橋アキの世界 (1973-2009) 3CD | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

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