On track: Before Cage went wild

To many, John Cage is the man who fashioned music out of silence, most controversially in 4'33", the piece with a title taken from its (non)playing time. For this composer the space between the notes might well be more important than the notes themselves.

It is crass, however, to write Cage off as a purveyor of Zen-soaked whimsy. Few 20th-century composers have been so persistent in questioning exactly what music, and sound itself, are all about.

Cage can perplex. Outrageousness and common sense go hand in hand and irony is one of his favourite ploys. He relinquished the everyday piano early in his career and, by the 1940s, was writing for toy pianos and inventing the prepared piano, in which an assortment of nuts, bolts and other objects were wedged between the instrument's strings.

Last Wednesday, American pianist Margaret Leng Tan gave us a taste of Cage live, on two of her toy pianos, as an opening bonus for the Film Festival's screening of her marvellous new documentary Sorceress of the New Piano. It was a rare privilege which deserved at least twice the audience it attracted.

In the meantime, a new CD of Cage's early piano music, played by German Herbert Henck, is a beguiling introduction to the composer's more conservative music. Nothing but hammers are touching these strings and, emphatically, they call for a standard concert grand.

Cage's wilder experiments lay ahead of him; the works here, like The Seasons, In a Landscape and other short pieces, nod to Debussy and Satie with their brilliant flourishes, piquant dissonances and translucent textures.

Henck caresses them into life and ECM does not let us miss a sonic sliver.

Another ECM release has Cage's 1950 String Quartet in Four Parts placed between the explorative electronics of Kaija Saariaho and the full-blooded gestures of Bruno Maderna, all brilliantly handled by Norway's Cikada Quartet.

Cage's work is a masterpiece of breaths and whispers. Movements with titles like Slowly Rocking reveal a contemplative bias, while the most energetic, a final Quodlibet is not so far from Copland trying his hand at Renaissance dancing. An intriguing and stimulating release.

* John Cage, Early Piano Music (ECM 476 1515, through Ode Records)

Cikada String Quartet, In due tempi (ECM 472 4222, through Ode Records)