Cage: Music for Prepared Piano, Vol. 2
John Cage abdicated his role as composer around 1950 to become a bystander as random sounds went by. Before that, he wrote some of the most fascinating music produced in America. Some of Cage's best early music was written for percussion ensembles. When the limited space at a dance performance forced him to become an inventor, he thought up a one-man percussion ensemble: the "prepared piano," a standard piano altered by clamping objects onto the strings. The music on this disc covers a wide range of moods and temperament, from the ghostly "Daughters of the Lonesome Isle" to the aggressive "And the Earth Shall Bear Again." Most of the pieces are imaginative enough to stand up to repeated listening. Boris Berman, a Russian-born pianist who now runs Yale's piano department, is better known for playing music like Scriabin and Prokofiev. But he seems completely in command of this radical idiom, with only a bit of rushing here and there keeping him from perfection. With its vivid sound and fascinating repertoire, this disc is another notable Naxos bargain.--Leslie Gerber