Herbert Henck - John Cage: Early Piano Music (2005)

John Cage: Early Piano Music comes from Herbert Henck, an experienced hand with the work of Cage, having previously recorded Music for Piano, Music of Changes, and Sonatas and Interludes in addition to a mighty swath of first-tier twentieth-century literature for piano for various labels, most notably Wergo and ECM New Series. These are early works for standard, not prepared, piano, and some of these pieces will be as familiar to dyed-in-the-wool Cageans as "Happy Birthday." This puts the pressure on Henck to excel, and he does so spectacularly well here.
The disc includes the two sets entitled Two Pieces for Piano, the piano version of The Seasons, Metamorphosis, In a Landscape, Ophelia, and the fragmentary Quest. The pieces date from 1935 to 1948, the same range covered by pianist Jeanne Kirstein in her pioneering 1967 survey of Cage's piano music for CBS Masterworks. Moreover, Henck's approach is somewhat similar to that of Kirstein in that he never forces Cage's music and lets it stand on its own terms. This is important in pieces like In a Landscape, which is moderately easy technically, thus most concert pianists seem to feel like this is a license to play it too fast, which Henck does not do. Whereas In a Landscape is by nature listener-friendly and not a hard sell, Henck's real achievement in John Cage: Early Piano Music is in making Cage's more astringent and twelve-tone-derived piano pieces as palatable as In a Landscape. Rather than try to elucidate the obvious row structures note by note in Metamorphosis, he interprets it primarily as music, revealing Metamorphosis for what it is -- Cage's "banging my head against the wall" music, the reason he abandoned serialism. Henck's performance of The Seasons is singular, as he makes this harmonically bitter and highly lacunary work sound almost sweet and sentimental.
Engineer Markus Heiland knows well how to capture the sound of Henck's piano -- it is clearly defined within an open space, with no hiss or extraneous reverberation. John Cage: Early Piano Music will be a great disc to enjoy with a glass of brandy and a superb stereo system, as Cage's music of this period permits reflection and is a good choice for the activity of reading. John Cage: Early Piano Music is a highly satisfying experience for those with grown-up tastes, no fear of music, and a need to chill out.