Some of John Cage’s most durable and popular music, the
Sonatas & Interludes have already appeared in recordings
including that of John
Tilbury from 1974 and re-released on the Explore label,
Boris
Berman from Naxos, Joanna
MacGregor and many others. This Aeon disc is one of those
marking the hundredth anniversary of Cage’s birth in 1912.
We’ve come across Cédric Pescia playing Schumann
and, though he’s not one of those pianists who have a
wide reputation for performing contemporary repertoire this
is part of the secret of approaching Cage’s transformation
of the conventional concert grand piano into a playground of
exotic timbres. Using relatively straightforward musical means,
Cage added bolts, clips and other materials to the piano strings
in order to change their sound, emphasising percussiveness,
or creating sounds which can be likened to gamelans, bells,
marimbas - you name it, if ever there the word ‘orchestral’
could be applied to the piano in terms of results, the Sonatas
& Interludes have been front runners for more than half
a century.
Pescia’s take on this music is full of refinement and
a highly musical, almost ‘classical’ observation
of the written score. His opening chords of Sonata I
are a less dramatic statement when compared to Boris Berman,
taken in stately and legato fashion, and lacking those extremes
of staccato and accentuation - designed to create a kind of
third-pedal echo. Berman is full of subtlety, and the only real
gain with the Aeon is a drier but closer recording, in through
which some of the more intimate subtleties of the sounds are
revealed. This is arguably a rather artificial approach, but
it is good to have a piano-side seat for this music. I was expecting
Berman to be the one tending towards greater eloquence in his
interpretations but it is Pescia who provides greater superficial
excitement, however missing some of the subtleties of the music
and on occasion lacking the kind of definition we know is possible.
Take the Sonata VI, which Pescia takes at high speed,
the left hand ostinato an urgent chase rather than the swinging
and syncopated number we know and love from Berman. You can
get away with this speed, but this is a little too much of a
headlong gallop, and those little fanfare elements which break
up the piece are also rather glossed over. The following Sonata
VII has that magical rising gesture which no doubt inspired
Arvo Pärt in the Silentium part of his Tabula
Rasa. Pescia’s piano preparation is rather vague in
this instance, beautifully soft and transparent, but hard to
track in terms of melodic shaping. There also seem to be notes
missing, with some of the ‘second part’ lines or
harmonies lacking.
This is a symptom of the main problem with this recording. We’ve
become used to pianists able to put their trust in Cage’s
sprinkling of transformational magic, digging deep to bring
out the multitude of colours, surprises and dramatic shocks
his score is able to conjure. Alas with Cédric Pescia
we have a version which is so concerned with finesse and the
seeking of a kind of interpretative poetry that we lose too
much of the essence of the actual pieces. Pescia’s recording
is full of beautiful things, is gorgeously recorded and is certainly
not without merit, but in lacking what I can only term ‘definition’,
the ultimate effect is rather flat.
There are always going to be differences between recordings
of the Sonatas & Interludes with so many variable
factors involved, between the nature of the piano and the micro-millimetre
variations in placement of your objects for its ‘preparation’.
One can also expect to have to defend that gap between expectation
and freshness of experience when criticising any new recording
of such pieces, and if you want to find out what I mean there
is nothing for it but to explore and compare for yourself.
If you want to hear how these pieces really should sound and
find out why they are so endlessly fascinating and popular,
you could do worse than track down Julie Steinberg’s recording
for the Music and Arts Programs of America label, CD-4937. Her
powerful and multi-faceted performance results in music which
can be so beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes.
How about that oh-so-simple Sonata XIV, the first of
the Gemini pair toward the end of the cycle, which carries a
melody of very few notes which seem to have fallen from the
heavens. I listen to Pescia and have to ask myself where this
melody has gone. The final Sonata XVI can seem like a
release in the form of a tortured chorale, the ghosts of Bach
and Hindemith playing argumentatively with a heavily built celestial
music box. Elegant and elegiac as he is, Pescia’s reluctance
to hit the music with any kind of really dramatic theatricality
leaves one high and dry: neither raised to a higher plane or
brought to one’s knees and bowed by the Wayne’s
World sentiment, “we’re not worthy”.
Dominy Clements
Cédric Pescia (prepared piano) 