Cage: Works for 2 Keyboards, Vol. 2

Featuring

Xenia Pestova Bennett
Pascal Meyer
John Cage

Did you know?

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Composition History

Three Dances and A Book of Music were John Cage's first commissions from professional musicians, written for Juilliard-trained pianists Arthur Gold and Robert Fitzdale.

Compositional Technique

John Cage transformed the piano into a 'workbench for sonic experimentation' by fastening various objects like screws, pennies, and rubber between its strings to alter its timbre.

Composer Biography

John Cage, despite his reputation as a philosopher, possessed an intensely practical mind that was crucial to his genius in instrumentation.

Performer Biography

The Pestova/Meyer Piano Duo's 2010 recording of Stockhausen's Mantra was the first to use digital technology for electronic processing and was praised as a 'highly accomplished presentation' by The Guardian.

Compositional Technique

The Music For ___ series, including Music for Two, features flexible time brackets where performers have considerable freedom in when to play sections, and some piano notes are produced by bowing the strings.

Composer's Artistic Vision

John Cage's interest in new and inharmonic sounds led him to base musical structure entirely on time itself, rather than traditional harmonic relationships.

Composition History

The prepared piano was invented by John Cage out of necessity in 1940 to create a percussive sound world for a dance piece when a full percussion ensemble would not fit the performance space.