As it is
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JOHN CAGE
As it is
Alexei Lubimov (piano) / Natalia Pschenitschnikova (voice)
[ ECM New Series / CD ]
Release Date: Thursday 20 September 2012
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A fresh approach to one of contemporary composition's most iconoclastic and inventive figures, issued on the occasion of John Cage's 100th birthday. Early Cage is the subject here, strikingly original songs and piano pieces from the 1930s and 1940s. Songs in which Cage sets words by writers whose vision was as independent as his own - James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, E. E. Cummings. As Paul Griffiths writes, "The music exists in singing that has a raw, living edge, and it exists in piano tone that can be utterly simple and utterly remarkable. There is also a third presence that of the producer, bringing forward the extraordinary resonances that come from Lubimov's piano, with preparation or without." Lubimov championed Cage's work in Russia and later had a close working relationship with the composer. He grasps both the playfulness of the music and its message of freedom. Recorded December 2011 in Zürich.
Recorded December 2011
Lubimov plays the unprepared Two Pieces for Piano demonstrating that Cage was not just a composer of surprises and eccentricities but a creator of music of intense feeling and profound expression. The world was correct that Cage was a genius, but until now for the wrong reasons. This CD provides the right ones. Give it air time on all channels.
Rick Jones, Words And Music
Between the songs come some of the early piano and prepared piano pieces, often, like Meditation and the Unavailable Memory Of, composed for dances by Cage's partner, Merce Cunningham. But what emerges most forcefully is the precision of Cage's aural imagination. Nothing is generalised, and the performances of Lubimov and Pschenitschnikova take immense care over every nuance, without ever sacrificing any of the sense of the music's shape.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian
The flood of releases marking Cage's centenary continues with this excellent selection of early works played by pianist Alexei Lubimov and singer Natalia Pschenitschnikova, who have been performing his music since the time it outraged the Russian establishment in the '60s and '70s. [...] The standout track, though, is "Dream" from 1948, a solo piano piece which follows no overt narrative progression but drifts from note to note without ever sounding wilful or wrong.
Andy Gill, The Independent
Tracks:
Dream
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
The Unavailable Memory of
A Flower
Music for Marcel Duchamp
Experiences No. 2
A Room
Three Songs
I. Twenty years after
II. Is it as it was
III. At East and ingredients
Two Pieces for Piano
I
II
Five Songs
1. little four paws
2. little Christmas tree
3. in Just-
4. hist whist
5. Tumbling hair
Prelude for Meditation
She is Asleep
Nowth upon nacht
Dream var.
