These excellent performances sound as good as new in their latest, digitally remastered manifestations. The music has worn reasonably well, too. Cage's dislocated archaisms have sufficiently strong accents and diversity of dynamics to obviate the passivity that might seem to threaten if you hear only a short extract, and the vibrato-less playing, producing weird, quasi-electronic timbres, has a fascination of its own. Penderecki's more conventional battery of once-novel avantgarde effects could easily become tedious, but the work is brief, and there's an invigorating post-Bartokian impetus, all the more salutary when heard after the uncharacteristically diffuse and protracted meanderings of the Lutoslawski. Mayuzumi's Prelude also sounds protracted, but there's an outburst of hill-billy-like strumming near the end to put its otherwise reticent musings into unexpectedly ironic perspective.'