JOHN CAGE The Seasons

The first appearance of the work of John Cage on ECM is cause for celebration. This recording goes beyond the artistic-nihilistic gestures and the anarchic-Zen gags to get at the essence of Cage's musical thought. Cage's playfulness can't be - and shouldn't be - muzzled, of course, but here one also experiences the beauty and the sensuality of the compositions, thanks to the input of two musicians who worked closely with the composer: conductor Dennis Russell Davies and pianist Margaret Leng Tan. The album includes a premiere recording of 'Seventy-Four' which Cage wrote especially for the American Composers Orchestra. (ECM Records)

Who would ever dream of arranging John Cage's tinkly little Suite for Toy Piano from 1948 for full symphony orchestra? Probably no one but Lou Harrison, whose virtuosic arrangement provides the most surprises on this already surprising album. Harrison not only perfectly renders the toy piano's unique timbre through combinations of plucked strings and mallet instruments, but he veers far from the toy sound while retaining the suite's spirit: he opens the second movement, for instance, with a majestic fanfare of brass and gongs. His orchestration is so adept that you forget the extremely limited pitch range of this inventive suite. Pianist Margaret Leng Tan provides a poetic rendition of the original.
We hear a dizzying range of Cage here, from the Stravinskian palette of The Seasons to 1992's Seventy-Four (in two versions) which sounds like it could be a Mahler slow movement slowed down to the extreme. Dennis Russell Davies matches Tan's pointillistic precision in Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra, and invests each performance with kaleidoscopic brilliance and full-blooded conviction. (Sarah Cahill /Classics Today)