Classical Music

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.

Susanne Kessel has dedicated this CD to the works of John Cage, the American Composer, Zen Buddhist and passionate mushroom eater. John Cage would be exactly 100 years old this year. Kessel is actively supported in this project by Joachim Krol, the speaker/narrator of these short stories. In 1993, Susanne Kessel was a prizewinner of the International Schubert Competition.

Classical Music

Extase is the new concept album by pianist Mario Haring. It is an unusual piano program with special guests that captures the energetic format of a party weekend in Berlin. It draws parallels and reconciles romantic indulgence with the mechanics of the modern age. Virtuosity meets sensitivity and makes for a fantastic and diverse musical journey. This album inspires. It offers the opportunity to open up to complex compositions and to unleash new levels of consciousness, far removed from the mundane, through devotion to music.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This disc comprises of some of the most important piano works of the 20th-Century, performed by Susan Svrcek.

Composed by John Cage between 1946 and 1948, "Sonatas and Interludes" for prepared piano is one of the most famous works of the composer and one of the works most admired by listeners and performers alike, holding a key position in his catalogue of works. Several years earlier, Cage had already developed the technique of piano preparation to explore the possibilities of sound manipulation: Preparation tables preceding each of his pieces indicate which materials (e.g. screws, bolts, rubber, felt or plastic elements) have to be used and where they have to be placed between the piano strings. Each object, it's size, strength, fixing method and position changes the pitch, volume, timbre and duration of the original piano sound. In comparison with Cage's earlier pieces, the preparation tables for the "Sonatas and Interludes" are comprehensive and accurate. The preparation, which takes the pianist from two and a half to three hours, encompasses more than half of all the strings of the piano. At first, Cage thus tried to achieve a specified sound image - an ideal which he later modified: "When I first placed objects between piano strings, it was with the desire to possess sounds (to be able to repeat them). But, as the music left my home and went from piano to piano and from pianist to pianist, it became clear that not only are two pianists essentially different from one another, but two pianos are not the same either all led me to the enjoyment of things as they come, as they happen, rather than as they are possessed or kept or forced to be."

In 1990 John Cage met sho player Mayumi Miyata, who requested he write a piece for the ancient Japanese mouth organ. Cage was deeply impressed by the sound of this instrument and in 1991 he wrote Two3 for sho and five water-filled conch shells - one of the so-called "Number Pieces" Cage worked on during the last years of his life. Although the sound of the piece's structure remains a mystery to rational thinking, it is directly accessible to sensory awareness - especially in the interpretation here played by accordion player Stefan Hussong and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei. Two3 for sho (a Japanese free reed musical instrument) and five water-filled conch shells (1991)

The works for violoncello solo recorded and compiled on this CD by Friedrich Gauwerky are reference works for John Cage's unusual way of composing. Apart from the tones, Cage also helped to put the varied forms of silence on the musical map: In John Cage's "Concert for Piano and Orchestra", the western art work, score, exploded: The work is composed in individual parts whose execution is freed of every constraint. Each part is even conceived as an autonomous work, e.g. like "Solo for Cello". "59 1/2 Seconds", one of his "time-length pieces", ranks among Cage's most radical "graphic" compositions. Stars become notes or noises in "Atlas Eclipticalis" - again without a score. With the "Variations I", written for any number of people using any sort and number of sound-producing means, Cage's composition reached the outmost limit on the way to absolute indetermination. But, if one hears "Etudes Bor�ales" for cello solo, however, one experiences that it is a piece whose status can only be compared with J.S. Bach's cello compositions. A critic wrote about Friedrich Gauwerky: "... a virtuoso with far-sightedness, good taste, amazing technique, and a captivating instrument." (Lutz Lesle: Neue Zeitschrift f�r Musik)

John Cage’s occupation with the sound possibilities of the prepared piano became the dominant tonal feature of his music after he moved to New York in 1942, and for many years it remained his preferred form of expression. Works for Piano and Prepared Piano, Vol. II, is an exquisite collection of dynamic pieces that John Cage wrote before he developed an interest in the I Ching, the ancient Chinese “book of changes,” or in atonality.

James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet A" by John Cage has been praised by the jury for the international Karl-Szuka Prize 1982 as "exceptional example of the radio art". For it's "nuanced translation of sprachkom�diantischer virtuosity" Klaus Reichert in 1983 auszgezeichnet the prestigious Wieland Translation Prize. In the series Ars Acustica WERGO has now the German and English live performance of "James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet" published - 1987 "NachtCageTag" of WDR Cologne on the occasion of the 75th birthday of the composer, and in 1990 in prominent guests - New York at WDR Sound Art Festival "2nd Acustica International" was added: uva John Cage, Klaus Reichert, Christian Wolff, Richard Kostelanetz, Hans Otte, Mauricio Kagel, Alvin Curran, John Cage's poetic-philosophical speech piece is based on memories of his decades-long study of the works of Joyce, Duchamp and Satie. The composer leads the listener in a zen and Dada world who meet several still living and dead ghosts like a big family party on an imaginary stage by him. A "narrator" leads as Orpheus Theatre this spring Imaginaire lively spirits that have influenced the art of the 20th century - as John Cage himself. John Cage: "The play is not a Alphabet It's a fantasy I wanted to speak to remove from our experience of modernity, the punctuation in order to illustrate by some as her own exciting agility.

With a score derived from star maps - the "Atlas Australis", a book of maps of stars as they can be seen from Australia - and the "I Ching" (64-choice Old-Chinese chance manual) "Etudes Australes" is a quintessentially Cageian work. Grete Sultan is an active recitalist who has performed music both classic and contemporary around the world. "When I wrote the 'Sonatas and Interludes', it was with Maro Amian in mind", Cage said. "David Tudor was in my mind when I wrote the 'Music of Changes'. Without Grete Sultan in mind, her quiet, indomitable strength, her devotion to the piano (which I also love), her discipline, her determination to transform music from the paper into life, I would not have embarked on this project. Now of course I am delighted that I did." Grete Sultan: piano.

These Cagean masterpieces have in common a grandness of conception - they take a single idea and explore it exhastively, at length. Cage is among the few figures in modern art of whom it could be said that the world would have been different had he not come - not just the music world or the art world, but the world we experience every day. (Richard Konstelanetz) "These works of Cage as performed by Joshua Pierce are fascinating to consider; fascinating to listen to." (The New York TImes) "Outstanding exponent of the Cagean prepared piano... This recording is excellent!" (The Musical Quarterly)