This three-CD set is an exciting prospect from an Italian team, with little-known early works by Cage and the first recording of his two-piano arrangement of Satie’s Socrate. As early as 1935 Cage wrote aggressive pieces such as Quest but the jazz effects in Jazz Study (1942) and Ad lib (1943) are even more remarkable. Simonacci has a good command of the polished set of five pieces called Metamorphosis (1938) and deserves credit here and elsewhere for deciphering Cage’s eccentric notation.

There is nothing for prepared piano but the Suite for toy piano is included. Unfortunately problems emerge here and in Two Pieces since Simonacci fails to count Cage’s note values precisely enough – and everything is fully notated. There is worse: one of Cage’s most beautiful pieces, In a Landscape (1948), is wrecked with the kind of rubato that would disfigure Chopin and is no part of Cage’s tradition at all.

In 1969 Cage made a transcription for two pianos of Satie’s Socrate for a dance by Merce Cunningham but the publisher refused permission, so they were stuck with a dance but no music. Consequently Cage took all the note-values of Satie’s score and adjusted the pitches by chance into a monody, rather like Satie’s Vexations. Tongue in cheek, Cage called it Cheap Imitation and the ballet was called Second Hand. Cage puts Satie’s melody line either in tenor or soprano register and sometimes both. Now out of copyright, it’s effectively played but exposes the monody of the Cheap Imitation version as a penitential exercise.

The Etudes Boreales is based on star charts. It’s presented in three versions – solo piano, solo cello, and piano and cello together. When Cage wrote the Etudes in 1978 he said he was writing difficult music because of the world situation “which to many of us seems hopeless”. If a musician could “do the impossible” it might inspire others to change the world! Frances-Marie Uitti did the impossible, giving the premiere and recording it for Mode in 1984. Marco Simonacci copes well but Michael Pugliese is more vivid than Simonacci as a percussion-pianist. It’s fascinating to hear the duo after the solo versions.