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Early Piano Music

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Early Piano Music

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Description
John Cage's early piano music (from the 1930s and 1940s) is the subject of German pianist Herbert Henck's new album. This is beautiful music, played with great sensitivity. Cage's name is so closely identified with experimental, dissonant and radical music making, with the idea that anything - including "silence" itself - can be music, that we tend to forget how uniquely lyrical and beautiful his early compositions are. Two years ago, ECM issued Henck's account of Cage's 'Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano', which many critics felt was a definitive reading of this important work, offering new insights by combining it with Henck's spontaneous improvisations, also for prepared piano. Now Henck goes back to the pieces that preceded and set the scene for 'Sonatas and Interludes'. These include The Seasons, previously heard on ECM in the orchestral version played by the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies and 'In A Landscape', one of the first Cage's "oriental meditations" persuasively played by Alexei Lubimov on 'Der Bote'. Cage's early piano pieces are amongst the most "accessible" of 20th century compositions, at times they seem closer to Satie than to the dissonant Cage of the later years. Each of Henck's albums is a kind of composer portrait, offering acute insight into the personality and musical thought of the music's authors. This is the latest in a series of remarkable recordings casting new light on some of the 20th century's most independent musical voices - it follows Federico Mompou, Alexandr Mosolov, George Antheil, Conlon Nancarrow and Jean Barraqué. Recorded 2002 Personnel: Herbert Henck - piano
Product details
Release Date:
2005-06-07
Publication Date:
2005-06-07
Publisher:
Ecm Records New Series (Nrw)
Languages:
Published: German
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
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