John Cage Works For Piano & Prepared Piano Vol. I (1986)

This is the first release in Hungaroton's projected multi-volume collection of the percussion music of John Cage. Though Cage's experiments in sound go back more than 60 years, his ideas about discrete percussive constructions (especially on prepared piano) have only begun to make themselves known–or perhaps have only recently become intelligible, thanks in large measure to the music of his greatest student, Morton Feldman.

John Cage is one of the giants of 20th century contemporary music. While he never wrote anything you'd call Classical Top 40, his music up to 1950 is far more accessible than the random and chance-influenced pieces he created later on. These mysterious, wispy pieces sound as though they were written for a small ensemble of ghostly percussion instruments, although they are played by a single performer playing a piano with various gadgets attached to the strings. His composing, performing and philosophy are intertwined, and Cage has influenced innumerable composers and performers in classical, jazz and rock music. Cage has made a life's work out of music-as-sound and sound-as-music.

John Cage is one of the giants of 20th century contemporary music. His composing, performing and philosophy are intertwined, and Cage has influenced innumerable composers and performers in classical, jazz and rock music. Cage has made a life's work out of music-as-sound and sound-as-music. This disc is a re-release of two albums from the mid-'60s of pieces Cage wrote in the late 1930s. Yuji Takahashi (himself a composer) plays "sonatas" for "prepared piano," an innovation by either Cage or Henry Cowell, where the piano has small objects inserted within to alter the sound. These pieces are short and sparse, with the piano producing tones similar to an mbira (African thumb piano) or a koto. The music is reminiscent of Erik Satie's piano music, but darker and more percussive, with a haunting, questing quality. Cage, with his (then) radical conceptions, "liberated" the piano from all the established notions of how it should sound, and open it―and music in general―to limitless possibilities.

"Silence. Sounds are only bubbles on its surface. They burst to disappear."

Written in 1946-48 for prepared piano and recorded in 1975 by Joshua Pierce, Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano by John Cage (WER 60156-50) represents the culmination of his work with the solo prepared piano, which had been his musical invention a decade before. Essentially, into the bed of piano strings he put such objects as large wooden screws, bolts of various sizes, pieces of plastic and rubber. In short, a panoply of devices were used that forever transformed the sounds of the ordinary piano strings, which showed his colleagues that Cage should not only be remembered as an important composer, but as a renowned inventor as well.

Beware. This is not your ordinary Joe-sixpack music. Download at your own risk!

Hailed for his “wonderfully warm, pliant, spontaneous playing” by the Washington Post, award winning pianist David Korevaar is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborator.

The musicians were brought together by education – they both studied in Kraków and Paris. The band assumed the name Cracow Duo over ten years ago.

Beethoven’s Sonatas for Piano and Cello, Op. 5 are revolutionary works, with neither instrument subservient and the piano fully independent. This release also features his vivacious variations on ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ and ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fu¨hlen’ from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Volume 2 is scheduled for release on 8.574530 in November.