Hard to describe, wonderful to experience

The Cage Project… the remarkable “sonatas” written by music philosopher and composer John Cage for
prepared piano, with added sound and visual effects.

Music / The Cage Project, Musica Viva. At Llewellyn Hall, January 31. Reviewed by SARAH BYRNE.

A grand piano with a mirrored lid sits in darkness beneath an enormous Calder-style kinetic sculpture; a mobile made up of tiers of found objects repurposed as musical instruments. 

The “grand piano” is in fact a prepared piano, the mirrored lid allowing the audience a glimpse of its inner workings, with 44 keys “prepared” by the insertion of items such as screws and bits of rubber, to provide an additional and sympathetic overlay of other, plangent, sounds. The mobile contains 44 improvised “instruments”, each complementing and responding to one of the prepared piano strings.

This is The Cage Project, conceived by Musica Viva’s artistic director Paul Kildea with percussionist and sculptor Matthias Schack-Arnott. 

The two have taken the remarkable “sonatas” written by music philosopher and composer John Cage for prepared piano, and added sound and visual effects by means of the moving installation. Outstanding French pianist Cedric Tiberghian completes the treatment with his own interpretation of the written music, and Schack-Arnott’s slowly rotating mobile responds to and enhances each note.

While hard to describe, this was wonderful to experience. Although at this stage of his career Cage had not yet fully embraced the deliberate randomness of his later works, the elements of chance and change still infuse these pieces. 

The atonality of the music is that of wind chimes; the overall effect is more like gamelan than piano. It is fascinating and beautiful, and (perhaps literally) mesmerising. I don’t think I’ve ever sat amongst an audience so spellbound and focused, nor left a concert hall with such a profound feeling of relaxation.

There’s something distinctly mid-century modern about this music, and as a lover of that aesthetic, the comparison that came to mind was not another composer (though I was struck by the recognition of Cage’s influence on contemporary composer Thomas Newman), but the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky. 

Kandinsky was a synesthetic – he “heard” colours as music – so perhaps that’s not a complete coincidence. It’s as if Cage was trying to capture Kandinsky’s much earlier Composition No 8 or Intersecting Lines in music. I can’t explain it better than that.

It could be said that Cage is an acquired taste, but this is a beautiful work that operates on multiple levels, and I do not think you have to be a fan of modernist music to find it enthralling. Kildea and Musica Viva are to be congratulated on this epic and unexpectedly approachable reimagining of an important work.

First published at Canberra City News, February 1, 2025