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Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano | 
 enlarge | Creators: John Cage, Boris Berman
Label: Naxos American
Category: Music
List Price: $8.99
Buy New: $4.62
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New (33) Used (8) from $4.23
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 30463
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 8559042
UPC: 636943904220
EAN: 0636943904220
ASIN: B00000JMYM
Release Date: July 20, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item. CD, DVD, Book, VHS more than 400 000 titles to choose from. ALL days Low Price !
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| Tracks:
| • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata I | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata II | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata III | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata IV | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: First Interlude | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata V | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata VI | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata VII | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata VIII | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Second Interlude | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Third Interlude | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata IX | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata X | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata XI | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata XII | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Fourth Interlude | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata XIII | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata XIV and XV Gemini (After the work by Richard Lippold) | | • | Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano: Sonata XVI |
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| Customer Reviews:
 I defer to Mr. White, but I like this disc April 27, 2006
Bryan Moore (Jonesboro, AR United States)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Edward Wright (see above review) knows more about this stuff than I do. I'm impressed that he has heard not one, not two, not three, but *four* different versions of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes! I thought I was doing great to hear just this one.
I have for a long time been interested in Cage as a sort of iconoclast and philosopher of sorts, so I picked this up at the good old Naxos bargain price, brought it home, listened to the first few pieces, and said, "What is this crap?"
But being no complete musical moron, I figured the idea of the music would grow on me, and grow on me it did. Lately, I want to hear this CD--not my Schubert or Beethoven--all the time. What initially sounded random and chaotic now seems magical. This music is by and large more rhythm and texture based than harmony based. It's tough music. I wonder what Ives would have thought of it (he never heard it, as far as I know).
When I hear Cage, I'm proud to be an American. The same goes for when I hear Ives.
I like this whole CD, but my favorite piece is, now at least, probably the Second Interlude, especially the last minute or so of it. It has a droning, clocklike, dreamy quality to it, but there might also be a little menace there as well, like the soundtrack to a slightly threatening dream. Much of this is, in fact, rather dreamlike.
This CD is positively not conventional Western music. The prepared piano highlights the percussive quality of the instrument (see Sonata 5), and the music seldom repeats itself thematically. It is brimming with ideas, but these are not ideas that everyone will find all that interesting.
 A groundbreaking concept for the time but somewhat flat... June 16, 2005
Phil C.
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
John Cage was obviously both a musical visionary and renegade. Most of his key musical ideas and philosophy completely challenged and even shatttered three centuries of musical development. The idea of literally destroying a piano would have seemed blasphemous to the great classical composers, however Cage realised that music need not be so strict and constricting. The prepared piano was a simple but groundbreaking idea in its time, however today this music feels pointless and the listener is left feeling detached and uninspired. This release is probably best listened to for analytical purposes only.
strange, but rewarding January 7, 2005
Bobvanhoove (Netherlands)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I arrived at this cd coming from the angle of electronic (dance) music. I can stand quite a bit of experiment, and I like music that sounds like machines. Where the music on this cd is not so machine like, it does have the same clinical, at times nearly desolate feel. The way the composer creates that feeling is rather unique i'd say. The feeling reminds me of the electronic music by the likes of frank bretschneider and some other mille-plateaux artists, even though the means of performance are rather different. It's a feeling that not everyone likes. And it's a feeling for special occasions. I enjoy this cd most on traintrips very early in the morning. Should say that I can hardly ever listen the cd untill the end. That's just too much. But I have experienced some of those magical listening moments when listening to this cd.
So, it may not be for everyone, it may not be for anytime, but I do recommend trying it.
Cage has a revolution with this work. July 13, 2004
Matan Ben Ishay (Israel)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
John Cage has written his best pieces for prepared piano during 1946-1948,when he composed the sonatas and interludes for this particular genious instrument.His approach to the rythmic structure instead of the harmonic one,is shooting excellent results,which are interesting to the ear,and simply creating something new,enjoyful.Another thing no one did before Cage until this work,is putting inside the music Zen Buddhism and Hinduism influences-the music remindes us of these eastern culture very well-and only for the best.The result is amazing,feeding us with wonder and excitement.
The work may also remind you modern-like dance tythms,and it is obvious,fore Cage has worked during that period as the director for the Merce Cunningham ballet(The works he had written for the Cunnigham ballet are some of his best).
The percussion effects produced by the prepared piano are wonderful,,and unbelivable,hearing a whole percussion orchestra,and sometimes you may want to shake your hooks with these maccabre effects.
A classical John Cage work from his earlier years,worth of everything in order to hear how wonderful and interesting and new it sounds,even until today.
The performance here by Boris Berman is excellent and quite assartive-I like it very much.He truly understands The music of Cage,though sometimes I feel he lack the excitement of these works.All by all,still an excellent performance,and a very interesting conrtol over the preapred piano.
 An unexceptional performance of an important early Cage work January 8, 2004
Edward Wright (Toronto, ON, Canada)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes have long been one of his most popular works (if popular means anything in the case of Cage). They are written for a piano prepared by inserting various objects onto the piano strings so as to partially dampen the sound in a variety of different ways. This preparation results in the piano becoming almost a one-man percussion orchestra (the comparison to Indonesian gamelan is useful, if oversimplistic). In addition, when the piano is prepared as Cage requests, each note has its own distinctive timbre as well as pitch, thus creating a link between these two musical elements.The Sonatas and Interludes were inspired by Cage's study of Hindu aesthetics as discussed by Ananda Coomaraswamy, and were an attempt to create music based around the Hindu theory of the nine emotions (the "white" emotions of heroism, eroticism, mirth and wonder and the "black" emotions of fear, anger, sorrow and disgust, all tending towards the most important emotion, tranquility). The result was a collection of twenty single-movement pieces, lasting something over an hour in complete performances. The sixteen sonatas are mostly based on repetitive rhythms and brief, fragmentary modal melodies, while the four interludes tend to be rather more rhythmically varied than the sonatas. There have been many recordings made of this set of works (the invaluable John Cage discography at http://www.johncage.info lists no fewer than 20 rival recordings), and it would be foolish to claim that Boris Berman's matches up to the best of them (Karis, Schleiermacher, Goldstein and Henck all have prior claims on the listener). In particular, Berman occasionally rushes the music, disturbing the intended tranquil feel, and his Russian-sounding espressivo playing in some of the sonatas seems distinctly at odds with Cage's aesthetic. I wonder if this recording was not made too soon, as Berman's second bite at the Cage cherry (a collection of miscellaneous prepared piano pieces recorded a year later and also available on Naxos), displays a distinctly greater empathy for the idiom.
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