This is one of Cage's last works, available thanks to further advocacy from the Hat-Hut Now label. The head of Austrian Radio's studio in Graz commissioned a work for a 58-piece concert band—the Pannonic Wind Orchestra, consisting of three or four of each instrument, including the whole saxophone family—to be given at the Musical Protocol in the Styrian Autumn of 1992. Cage scrutinized plans of the historic Landhaushof in Graz in order to create a spatial, outdoor performance piece based on the 58 arches of the building's arcades. This recorded premiere took place on October 11th, 1992, but not under the composer's direction as planned since he died two months earlier.
From the start you can tell this is outdoor music from the acoustic. People are walking about and the citizens of Graz seem to have quite a lot of coughs: someone even manages a feeble sneeze. Each player has his own part and is given an agreed length of performance. The individual contributions float in and out so that the density of sustained sounds varies from moment to moment, with overlapping continuities and little silence. As in most Cage of the last 40 years there is, intentionally, nobody in control. The work unfolds like a natural phenomenon. But the rich visual element available to the original audience is of course missing on CD—it is easy to imagine the occasion successfully filmed with the splendid Landhaushof, built at various periods from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, as the chief protagonist. The architecture would then take the place of the dance in the Cage-Cunningham collaborations, linked simply by happening at the same time. But Fifty-eight is far from dull, even if the final applause is the only indication of the end. The band found the experience ''the high point of their activities up to now'', even without the composer himself to direct it, and one can see why.'