This recording is a reflection of several performances that took place over time and in varying acoustic environments, including collaborations with contemporary and aerial/vertical dance.

The Cage works tend to be binary in form, and while meditatively free flowing in spirit, the architecture is clean and easily understood. The Bach works—four movements that make up a sonata—offer a multitude of interpretive options, including an approach that wanders through the harmonic labyrinth without regard to pulse and traditional notions of time, magnifying minute rhetorical statements along the way. It can be such that the Bach works represent the dreamscape while the atonal prepared piano pieces of Cage represent structure. This might be in opposition to many listeners’ expectations.

John Cage (1912-1992) holds his own special place amidst this stylistic pluralism. Although Cage did not specifically write a trio for horn, violin, and piano, his work Music For (1984) can be easily fleshed out in this instrumental lineup. Music For is a bundle of 17 parts that can be randomly associated with one another. Each possible combination represents an entirely valid version of the piece – ranging from a solo performance to piano duet, string quartet, or ensemble with voice. The version for horn trio is called Music For Three.

Two World Premiere Recordings are making this unusual album very attractive, not only for friends of french horn; the sounds and sound combinations are thrilling. Perfectly high caliber the artist crew: Premysl Vojta is one of the leading french horn player in Europe; Florence Millet is very much part of the contemporary music scene, giving master-classes and organising festivals; Ye Wu is Primaria in the Symphony orchestra of the WDR.

This new album release by the Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Kļava on Ondine is devoted to choral works by the legendary American composer and music pioneer John Cage (1912–1992), one of the most leading figures in 20th Century music. John Cage is the dictionary definition of an avant-garde composer. Choral music and John Cage might seem like an odd pairing. And indeed, strictly speaking, Cage wrote only two compositions for chorus, both of which appear on this album: Hymns and Variations (1979) and Four2 (1990). The other works on the album are written for ensembles that are more or less open-ended and which have been interpreted here for choral forces. One reason Cage and choruses did not mix well may have been his notorious hostility to harmony in music. Arnold Schoenberg told Cage that he lacked any feeling for harmony, and that this would be a wall between him and his goal of being a composer. Given all this, it is no wonder that Cage and choruses didn’t tend to mingle together. And so it was not until Cage was 67 years old that he wrote his first work for choral forces: Hymns and Variations.

REVIEWS:

John Cage was barely a choral composer. But by combining the couple of pieces he wrote for chorus with a creative interpretation of the flexible instrumentation of a few other scores, you can arrive at an hour or so of mysterious, wordless music for vocal ensemble. “Hymns and Variations” (1979) is the earliest work on this intimate and luminous new album from the Latvian Radio Choir. Cage subtracts some notes from two hymns by the early American composer William Billings, and extends the duration of some that remain, creating an eerily pure, serene suggestion of 18th-century harmonies.

--The New York Times

That Cage delighted in provoking audiences is undoubtable, but his mischief concealed his seriousness of purpose. He revealed and explored a vast New World of sound which had hitherto been a terra incognita of the mind. But above all, Cage was a tireless proselytizer of the gospel of beauty and created some of the 20th century’s most radically beautiful music. These strands are united here in this breathtaking collection from Ondine of some of the composer’s late choral music performed by the Latvian Radio Choir.

--MusicWeb International

John Cage and choral music might seem strange bedfellows, but there was no corner of the musical landscape that this dedicated breaker of composition rules didn’t want to deconstruct. With its drifting, otherworldly textures, Five, from 1988, could almost have come from the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Four2, astonishingly written for a high school choir, includes a tonal tenor and bass pairing, oozing quite unexpected calm.

[One] can’t but be stunned by the fearless skill of Sigvards Kļava’s choir as they navigate the most jagged, fragmented notes and pitches—the musical equivalent of climbing Mount Everest just with your hands and feet.

--BBC Music Magazine

There are, I think, two possible approaches to this recording. One is simply to listen through it and let the effect of the (very different) pieces on it wash over one, reacting to each in turn. The other is to read the excellent booklet notes by James Pritchett and then listen to the music, following in more or less detail what he explains in them. Either process would work, because the music is intrinsically interesting and frequently very impressive. It must be said as well that the singers sound as though they are enjoying themselves enormously.

--Gramophone

"My free life within Four Walls" began with concert performances in 1992 and beyond, followed by a number of stage performances with dancers in Finland and Russia. The collaboration of John Cage with Merce Cunningham began in 1942; and 70 years later, in 2012, knowing my admiration for Cage and my numerous concerts with his music, the outstanding dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov proposed to embody the "Four Walls" in a dance on the stage of his Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York) with the participation of legendary ‘Merce Cunningham Dance Company’, which by this time officially completed its activities. The director Robert Swinston and 8 dancers played with me the performance of the Four Walls / Doubletoss Interludes, and this became a worthy completion of the history of the Four Walls as a theater, while this piece remains a wonderful independent music, anticipating the style of Glass, Pärt and in general, the entire movement of minimalism. In 2015, BAC founded the Cage-Cunningham Foundation, and I received a Fellow Prize of the First-Ever Cage Cunningham Fellowship." (Alexei Lubimov)

George Antheil called himself a ‘Pianist-Futurist’. A lover of speed, cars and airplanes, the American composer settled in the Paris of the Années Folles, where he frequented Picasso shows and Stravinsky concerts, and composed works such as the Sonate sauvage and Jazz Sonata, which caused a scandal: during a concert in Budapest, he even brandished a pistol to restore silence in the hall . . . He hero-worshipped Beethoven, whose pieces he played in the first part of his recitals before moving onto his own music. In 1933, he returned to the United States, where he met John Cage and Morton Feldman. Patricia Kopatschinskaja and the young Finnish pianist Joonas Ahonen – whom The Times, following what the journalist described as ‘one of those concerts you remember for ever’, presented as the violinist’s ‘doppelgänger’! – pay tribute to the self-proclaimed ‘Bad Boy of Music’.

Critical acclaim from the New York Times:

"George Antheil (1900-59) was a technophilic, self-declared bad boy of music; regardless of whether that’s true, he didn’t please his way into the canon. Here, however, this American composer gets a tribute that places him in a lineage of innovators from Beethoven to the mid-20th century — traced by the daredevil violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and an enthusiastic partner in the pianist Joonas Ahonen.

"...Antheil would perform his works alongside, say, something from a century earlier, and Kopatchinskaja and Ahonen do the same by programming Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor. It is a fiery and freely interpreted account reminiscent of Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich’s fearless, unpredictable, at times unwieldy recordings from the 1990s.

"Like the Beethoven, the Antheil is in four movements, but it blends traditional form with a thoroughly modern sound that, in this reading, bustles at a breakneck pace with percussive and metallic timbres. Looking beyond Antheil’s generation, the album also includes pieces by Morton Feldman and a nocturne by John Cage, works that subtly recall the sonatas but also stand alone as studies in sound-making and extremity — of strength and softness, of overtone-rich expanses. Executed with discipline that borders on mechanical, they couldn’t be better suited to a world according to George." --The New York Times (Joshua Barone)

In the last years of his life, John Cage wrote a great many so-called "Number Pieces" the title indicating the number of performing musicians. While most of these pieces indicate which instruments are to be played, as well as the sounds that are to be produced, other pieces offer only general tone descriptions or a framework for choosing the tones oneself. What these pieces do have in common is time\-organization: Cage designates the measure within which the tones must be played. Should one play these sound\-sequences within the interval quickly, then one must wait for the beginning of the next measure in order to continue; should one play with an even slowness, the separate intervals are joined without interruption. And so, each performance of the same piece is different: in one instance an even flow of sounds, in another a pulsation of rapid responses accompanied by pauses (including all variations). An exception is "Two²". Here the two pianists do not play according to a stopwatch, but rather by reacting to one another: Although the piece indicates measure, it does not assign tempo or even pulse. While both interpreters play independently of each other, they may continue on to the next measure only when the other player has finished his. Cage decided on the number of tones within a measure by drawing upon the rules of Renga, Japanese linked poetry, in which the number of syllables per verse are set at 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. As the pedal is continuously depressed, the notes sound into one another and this inner structure remains undetected.

CAGE – SA TIE – FELDMAN – TAKAHASHI sums up the focus of this album. All of these works by Cage are influenced by Satie. Cage’s friend and colleague Morton Feldman made an arrangement of Cage’s solo piano “Cheap Imitation” for a trio of piano, flutes/piccolo and glockenspiel. Feldman’s admiration for the pianist Aki Takahashi caused him to gift this arrangement to her. And, full circle, we have the repertoire of this album. The major discovery is Feldman’s arrangement of Cheap Imitation for this very Feldmanesque instrumental ensemble. It is unknown why Feldman made this arrangement in 1980. Knowing of Takahashi’s reputation as a pianist specializing in new music, Feldman had invited her to be an artist in residence at the university where he taught. When she was leaving, Feldman gave a musical score to Takahashi as a gift. It was a copy of John Cage’s solo piano piece Cheap Imitation with annotations by Feldman. He told her that this was an instrumental version of this piece: flute, piano, and glockenspiel.

John Cage allowed for some of his works to be combined and performed simultaneously. Percussionist Bonnie Whiting has created uniquely virtuosic solo-simultaneous realizations of some of these works for "speaking percussionist." 51'15.657" for a speaking percussionist is Whiting's solo-simultaneous realization of all of 45' for a speaker and 27'10.554" for a percussionist. Cage wrote 45' for a speaker to perform himself. He wrote on thirty-two subjects and added a series of gestures (gargling, lighting a match, etc.) to be performed during the delivery. Like the percussion piece, each page is one minute long. Between 1984 and 1987 Cage composed 17 pieces called Music for ____. Any of these pieces can be performed alone or together in any combination. Here Whiting combines one of the percussion versions with the version for voice. Her recital is completed by Cage's two beautiful, classic, early pieces for voice and piano: The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs and A Flower. Here the piano is used as a percussion instrument, never played on the keys but rather knocked and slapped on by th epianist. As in the larger works, Whiting gives a tour de force performance of both parts simultaneously. As a bonus, Whiting's mentor Allen Otte performs his work for speaking pianist/percussionist which is created around works of Cage and utlizing Cage's compositional "tools" for both the music and text.

Nicholas Isherwood made his début as Lucifer in Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden, and has since collaborated closely with composers such as Crumb, Henze, Kurtág and Xenakis. His initial exposure to the music of John Cage left him less than convinced, but after corresponding with Cage he acquired a taste for it – something which soon developed into what he now calls ‘a love affair’. On ARIA, Isherwood presents most of Cage’s music for solo voice that is not included in the composer’s Song Books, and most pieces are here recorded for the first time by a male singer.