CC - John Cage & Christian Wolff
Philip Thomas (piano)
Apartment House
Trust is the making of indeterminate music and Apartment House’s new recording is all trust. Philip Thomas makes the piano part magnetic, like the centrifugal planet in an erratic constellation....
CC - John Cage & Christian Wolff
Philip Thomas (piano)
Apartment House
Purchase product
Trust is the making of indeterminate music and Apartment House’s new recording is all trust. Philip Thomas makes the piano part magnetic, like the centrifugal planet in an erratic constellation....
About
Sixty years after John Cage began composing his most extensive and ambitious compendium of indeterminate and graphic notations, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58) remains something of a mystery. Often discussed for its stunning array of unusual and elaborate notations, it is all too rarely performed. As this recording testifies, it is a rich, dazzling and mesmerising work; carnivalesque, a 20th-century masterpiece. As a companion work to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, celebrated American composer Christian Wolff - a close associate of Cage and fellow member of the ‘New York School’ - was commissioned to write a new work for Apartment House. The result, Resistance, was premiered in July 2017. Both works celebrate performance as a unique event, and the openness of the scores produces music which resists repetition. Both works question the nature of an ensemble, how musicians and sounds relate to one another, and the functions of musical form in ways that, like Wolff’s title, seem vital to contemporary life. This recording by Apartment House with Philip Thomas (piano) marks a long and rich engagement with the music of both Cage - in particular the Concert for Piano and Orchestra - and Wolff, whose music they have enjoyed performing for 15 years.
Contents and tracklist
- Philip Thomas
- Apartment House
- Jack Sheen
- Recorded: 1 July 2017
- Recording Venue: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, School of Music, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- Philip Thomas
- Apartment House
- Jack Sheen
- Recorded: 1 July 2017
- Recording Venue: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, School of Music, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Awards and reviews
26th October 2017
Trust is the making of indeterminate music and Apartment House’s new recording is all trust. Philip Thomas makes the piano part magnetic, like the centrifugal planet in an erratic constellation. Around him spin trumpet, violin, flute and others, everyone quick-witted and playful.