It must be very unusual
to have six performances of the same
work on one disc but I am sure the eccentric
American composer John Cage would have
approved. His work consisting of four
minutes and thirty-three seconds of
"silence" was premiered in
1952 by David Tudor who sat at the piano,
opened and closed the lid, and timed
the work by means of a stopwatch. Since
then it has not featured often on concert
programmes until adopted in the 1990s
by Kissin as one of his signature pieces,
perhaps a deliberate attempt to show
that his artistry extends beyond large-scale
romantic works.
It has to be said that
the work lends itself more to DVD than
CD for the artist’s opportunities for
interpretation lie in the visuals. Kissin
certainly strives to make each performance
different. By going beyond opening and
closing the lid he has brought a new
performance tradition to this fascinating
work. In all of the performances he
moves stealthily (and, crucially, without
making a sound) around the stage, apparently
lost in wonder. But he varies the routine
considerably, most strikingly in Vienna
when he spends a least a minute peering
into the bowels of the instrument –
perhaps wondering what might have been
inserted between the strings? It seems
doubtful that Cage would have wanted
this for his purpose here was to demonstrate
the impossibility of silence and such
movements could be considered distracting.
The Stokowski transcription
is a first performance and therefore
of great interest. It was his last work
and only discovered well after his death
in 1977. The orchestral size is the
same as for his Bach transcriptions
but with added tubas. Some may consider
that this over-romanticises the purity
of Cage's essentially classical conception
but I enjoyed it immensely. With regard
to the orchestra – who have to pass
a large clock round every one of the
players without making a sound in exactly
4’33" – this work brings as big
a challenge to them as any of Ives’s
more extreme utterances. The New York
Philharmonic mostly manages it with
aplomb (apart from one of the violas
who almost dropped the clock) in what
was apparently an encore after a stirring
performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano
Concerto. Serebrier (a protégé
of Stokowski) presides with authority
– he starts off with the clock and at
the very end it finally reaches Kissin
just before the crowd goes wild.
The Berlin performance
lasts for only 4’31" but this isn't
an editing error. Some of the audience,
following the score with stopwatches
in hand, clearly felt short-changed
and expressed their disapproval with
a few boos. This was, perhaps, a little
harsh considering that the playing time
of 4'33" was not part of the original
score, but merely an accident of the
work's first performance.
In London – inevitably
– someone coughs loudly at 4’02"
– couldn’t they have waited just thirty
seconds or so? The variety of audience
reactions at the end is interesting
– respectful silence broken eventually
by polite applause in Vienna (effectively
lengthening the work), and bravos in
London, whilst in Tokyo Kissin was showered
with mushrooms (apparently Cage was
an avid mycologist).
Sensibly we are given
the performances in chronological order
and together they form a kind of suite.
Sound quality should not really be a
major issue here but don’t imagine that
the engineers could take a tea-break
before hurrying back to make sure the
applause is properly balanced – it is
crucial that they capture what silence
there is and, in contrast to their usual
approach, any unintended sounds that
might occur. Camerawork is particularly
important in this work and here one
might be critical of the inter-cutting
of camera angles during the performances
since this arguably conflicts with the
philosophical intentions of the work.
In keeping the spirit
of the piece, there are no notes and
the inside of the booklet is completely
blank so that you can write them yourself
during the performances.
Although when you are
playing the disc it may seem to last
for ever, 33 minutes is very short shrift
for a DVD especially bearing in mind
that rather more than 4 minutes is applause.
To get round the problem Sony are offering
"two for the price of one"
– presumably so you can also amuse the
kids with it if your car as has a DVD
player. Whether their attention spans
will stretch to 4’33" probably
depends on how well you have brought
them up.
Which of these performances
might be considered a top choice? Well,
the orchestral version is special but
for everyday looking I choose the Tokyo
version (where the silence really was
golden), particularly for the mushrooms,
a nice touch from an audience who know
and love their Cage.
Patrick C Waller
Evgeny Kissin (piano) 
4334 3343-3 [33’00]
