John Cage percussion music

3 Constructions, Quartet, Trio, Living Room Music

Third Coast Percussion

Mode 243 DVD

Recorded with surround sound in full video, this is the most convincing experience of John Cage, convincng me after intermittently doubting his importance, that compounded by hearing him deliver a risibly incomprehensible lecture at the AlmeidaTheatre, probably around his 70th birthday.

Aurally & visually this DVD (surely no-one wants the CD version?) is a triumph, notable for the subtlety of its often quiet to very quiet music, closely miked, precisely imagined and seemingly totally absorbed by the players of Third Coast Percussion and associates, who perform entirely by memory; no music stands in sight and with no feeling of improvisation.

Adding one or two pages of the Peters Edition scores as a "bonus extra" or on Mode's website, if copyright permitted, would enhance the value of this important release?

Peter Grahame Woolf

But see how one can change ! PGW