Cage: Third Construction

John Cage’s vision of the future of music was first shaped by an ntense creative period from 1935-1942, when he wrote many of the seminal works of percussion chamber music featured here. When he composed these works, the young Cage was basically the same age as the members of Third Coast Percussion.

This release includes all three of the groundbreaking 'Constructions'. 'First Construction' (in Metal) utilises dozens of metal instruments which are beaten, scraped and shaken, creating an other-worldly mixture of resonant sound unlike any heard before it. 'Second Construction' prominently features one of Cage’s greatest inventions, the prepared piano.

Finally, 'Third Construction' brings the greatest degree of complexity and the widest range of instrumental timbres yet, creating one of the first landmark pieces in the percussion chamber music literature.

-There are very few recordings of the early works 'Quartet' and 'Trio'.

-The surprisingly beautiful sounds of everyday objects come forth in Third Coast Percussion’s recording of 'Living Room Music', recorded onsite at the futuristic Ford House in Aurora, IL, designed by one of America’s most iconoclastic architects, Bruce Goff, in 1947. Third Coast utilizs the house itself as an instrument for the first movement.

All works dynamically directed and filmed by Ross Karre. The DVD features surround and stereo audio. Hailed by the Chicago Reader as “one of the finest new-music ensembles in the country,” Third Coast Percussion's performances have swiftly gained national attention for effortlessly combining the energy of a rock concert with the precision and sophistication of classical chamber music.

The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is that they both generate a striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over a period of four years, from 1939 to 1943, by the composer whom the critic Fred Goldbeck described as “the greatest Giraudouxian of our age”, and clarify in an extraordinarily oblique manner the prehistory of this “automation” of the creative act, towards which one can detect the perpetual temptation in the young Cage.

One of the greatest contributions of twentieth-century American composers is the (re)emphasis of percussion. Drawing upon three fairly distinct roots-Asian influence, jazz and related Afro-Latin forms, and the experimental music movement -American composers have rediscovered percussion’s importance in relation to other global musical trends. A virtual “percussion renaissance” has influenced much of the contemporary composition since the composers on this disc began their work.

The wide-ranging colors and textural possibilities of a percussion quartet are vividly displayed on this eclectic program of new and standard works for various combinations of mallet and percussion instruments.

For half a century the WERGO label has been synonymous with contemporary music. Its repertoire comprises more than 600 CDs, which have won many awards and prizes, is a major collection of 20th-21st-century music, portraying almost all established contemporary composers. As a result, the label WERGO not only is part of the history of new music but also continues to make contributions to it. In May WERGO celebrates its 50th anniversary. On this occasion WERGO publishes a 5-CD set with music from five decades - all for an especially reasonable price. HAPPY BIRTHDAY WERGO!