Ryoanji (1985) is unusual in that it brings together all of Cage’s oriental disengagements in a work which responds to a specific place – the famous Zen garden at the Ryoan Temple in Kyoto, Japan. The garden consists of a flat, raked white gravel foundation punctuated by occasional outcrops of rock apparently placed at random. The person said to have designed it died as long ago as 1525 but it is a perfect image for much of Cage. I was there last year and the booklet about the temple states that “it is up to each visitor to find out for himself what this unique garden signifies”. That fits Cage too but a picture of the garden in the CD booklet would have helped listeners enormously.
There is already one CD with Ryoanji available in the UK (Etcetera, for trombone and percussion) but I have been going back to the original recording supervised by Cage – Isabelle Ganz (mezzo) and Michael Pugiliese (percussion) on the two-LP set on mode (USA – nla). As in the new Ives Ensemble recording with flute and trombone, the percussion is a constant. The effective microtones, for flute especially, create a strong Japanese flavour and one listens to the music in exactly the same way as one looks at the garden.
Ryoanji is flanked by two late works designated by numbers referring to the number of players involved – Ten, commissioned by the Amsterdam-based Ives Ensemble, and Fourteen. Both works are first recordings. Fourteen has the richer palette, with continuous sustained sounds produced in unusual ways, such as bowing the piano strings or percussion instruments with horsehair. In both pieces Cage works with single notes, each of which is an event to be heard in its own right – some like distant foghorns at sea – although brought into relation with others at the same slow evolving pace. There is something specially impressive about these fruits of Cage’s last two years and these are dedicated performances, well recorded.'