Prom 47 (17.8.12): Cage Centenary Celebration

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Friday 17 August at 7.45 p.m.
Royal Albert Hall

CageL 1O1 (12 mins)
Cage: Improvisation III (12 mins)
Christian Marclay: Luggage 2012 – improvisation for orchestra (c5 mins)
Cage: Atlas eclipticalis/Winter Music/Cartridge Music (30 mins)
Cage: Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra (20 mins)
Cage: Four2 (7 mins)
Cage: But what about the noise of crumpling paper ... (15 mins)
Cage: Experiences II (3 mins)
Cage: ear for EAR (Antiphonies) (2 mins)
David Behrman, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe & Christian Wolff: Quartet – improvisation (c25 mins)
Cage: Branches (20 mins)

John Tilbury piano, prepared piano, Frank Denyer piano, Aki Takahashi piano, Christian Wolff piano, David Behrman live electronics,Takehisa Kosugi live electronics
Keith Rowe,Vicki Bennett,Steve Beresford,Adam Bohman,Jonathan Bohman,John Butcher,Karen Constance
Angharad Davies,Rhodri Davies,Patrick Farmer,Ram Gabay,Christoph Heemann,Lina Lapelyte,John Lely,Anton Lukoszevieze,Dylan Nyoukis, Mariam Rezaei, Robyn Schulkowsky
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Exaudi
Ilan Volkov conductor

To mark the centenary of John Cage's birth, Ilan Volkov has created a programme that reflects the composer's iconoclastic thinking, fertile imagination and arresting humour. John Tilbury, who has for decades been associated with Cage's work, tonight plays the exquisitely beautiful Concerto for Prepared Paino and Orchestra. Cassette players and plucked cactuses are just two examples of the blindingly original, yet almost naively simple thinking that saw Cage - wittingly or otherwise - upturn practically every musical rule in the book.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Did John Cage inspire "The Who"? They smashed their guitars in front of the audience. John Cage orders the musicians to damage a grand piano in order to play this concerto.

[Bryn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEwYt...ED8D3BCA874D47

[heliocentric]

John Cage orders the musicians to damage a grand piano in order to play this concerto.

Really? I've seen it performed a couple of times and didn't see any damage done. Maybe Cage's "order" somehow wasn't carried out, but, not having a score at home, I can't really check. Can you throw any light on this?

[JohnSkelton]

Did John Cage inspire "The Who"? They smashed their guitars in front of the audience. John Cage orders the musicians to damage a grand piano in order to play this concerto.

http://www.richardbevans.com/wellpreparedpiano.html

As the first book to explain this "delicate topic," WPP shows how piano preparations can be safely applied to a piano without any damage whatsoever to the instrument, and without putting it out of tune.

"Ordering" musicians to do anything doesn't really seem Cage's style, somehow.

[heliocentric]

piano preparations can be safely applied to a piano without any damage whatsoever to the instrument

Of course. I mean, you can twist the bell of a trombone while putting in or removing a mute if you don't do it properly and with care.

For those wishing to make up their own minds about the Cage/Who connection, here's the first movement of Cage's Concerto, one of his most delicate and beautiful pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHFzu-X6Ruw

And here are The Who performing "My Generation" and destroying their instruments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67BIv-R3Qw

[Bryn]

Be fair. If the preparations are applied without wearing suitable glove, sweat etc. from the fingers might easily get on the strings and that would lead to corrosion. To that extent, the instrument could be damaged, but I can find no sign in the score of a prohibition re. the wearing of gloves while making the preparations.

[Serial_Apologist]

Be fair. If the preparations are applied without wearing suitable glove, sweat etc. from the fingers might easily get on the strings and that would lead to corrosion. To that extent, the instrument could be damaged, but I can find no sign in the score of a prohibition re. the wearing of gloves while making the preparations.

I remember similar excuses being made at the Henry Moore sculpture exhibition at the "old" Tate quite a few years ago. When some of us wanted to experience the tactile qualities referred to by the artist we were told off by an attendent. How quickly - (unless you happen to be a Bible fundamentalist) - would it take the billions of years of resistence in that rock sculpture to be undone by a few millimicrons of possible human sweat? And even if we're talking about soiling polished surfaces, what were Spontex cloths created by God for?

We had Keith Tippett and Stan Tracey down in Bristol for a duo session in a music club which happened to possess two grand pianos in one room. Afterwards the caretaker said he would report us for "damage" to one of the pianos. All Keith had done was to move a small pebble and some woodblocks around on the strings to create varous effects comparable to "preparation"; nevertheless we received a letter from said music club, debarring us from further use of the premises.

[Bryn]

Last year I attended a concert at the RCM which included the Cage/Hiller HPSCHD along with such iconic works as Cowell's The Banshee and The Aeolian Harp. Green cotton(?) gloves were worn for all activity inside the piano. Hardly what one might call authentic, what? I bet Henry did not wear gloves while experimenting as part of the process of composition.

A piano tuner friend and ex-colleague gets very heated re. the subject of piano preparation. His ex-wife was fond of preparing his best instrument (one of his pianos, that is) and he blames her for ruining it.

Now reinforcing a Strad. That's what I call damaging an instrument.

[Bryn]

In preparation[sic] for the 17th I have been spinning recordings of some of the Cage Uncaged concerts from 2004. Listening to the first of these, I wondered whether EA might have got John Cage mixed up with his mentor Henry Cowell, whose Concerto for Piano and Orchestra certainly is something of a piano breaker. Philip Mead, the soloist at that concert, mentioned how he had broken six strings and done other damage to his own piano while rehearing the piano part. He was putting off getting the piano tuner in until after the performance itself. I wonder what the bill was for restoring the piano used on the night?

Not Philip Mead here (this one is a bit more gentle on the instrument) but is should act as and illustration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvlJTfCyNe8