Milli: Imaginary Landscapes

Chronique

These performances of two seminal works by John Cage by the Italian new music group Ensemble Prometeo, conducted by Marco Angius, date from 2009, but the release of the recording was coordinated to coincide with Cage's Centennial year in 2012. Cage made electronics a key element in each of his five Imaginary Landscapes, written between 1939 and 1952, although several of the movements include an assortment of traditional and found instruments such as muted piano, cymbal, lion's roar, African thumb piano, bass drum, tin cans, conch shell, and metal waste basket. The most famous (or notorious) are No. 4, for 24 performers using 12 radios, and No. 5, for tape recordings of any 42 phonograph records. The use of turntables, radio broadcasts, and recordings chosen by the players guarantees that no two performances will be alike. Sixteen Dances, for flute, trumpet, four percussionists, piano, violin, and cello (1950-1951) was one of the first, if not the first work in which Cage began incorporating chance-derived techniques, foreshadowing what would be one of the defining aspects of his legacy. Four of the movements were composed intuitively, with the rest based on the chance arrangement of predetermined elements. The Dances were written for Merce Cunningham's company, and lasting almost 45 minutes, constituted a major dance piece. Ensemble Prometeo plays with tight precision and effectively communicates the drama of the music's often abrupt and surprising juxtapositions. If anything is missing, particularly in the Sixteen Dances, it is the intangible but perceptible sense of fun that Cage brought to his work. He certainly took his music seriously and expected the same from performers, but the best performances capture the sense of wonder and delight that he felt in the music he had created. The recording is cleanly engineered, with good balance and a realistic ambience.
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