CC - John Cage & Christian Wolff - Huddersfield Contemporary Records (HCR): HCR16CD - 2 CDs or download

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.... — The Guardian, 26th October 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 17th Nov 2017
Catalogue No: HCR16CD
Label: Huddersfield Contemporary Records (HCR)
Length: 97 minutes

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Cage: Concert for Piano & Orchestra

Work length53:08

Album only

Philip Thomas (piano)
Apartment House
Jack Sheen
Recorded: 1 July 2017
Recording Venue: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, School of Music, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

Wolff, C: Resistance

Work length44:30

Album only

Philip Thomas (piano)
Apartment House
Jack Sheen
Recorded: 1 July 2017
Recording Venue: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, School of Music, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

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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.

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.

CC - John Cage & Christian Wolff

2 CDs

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