This CD is a reissue, in facsimile packaging, of Fylkingen’s début releases, two LPs taped in Stockholm in 1965. Written between February 1946 and March 1948 for Maro Ajemian, the Sonatas and Interludes were, at the time of this recording, still quite new, although already established as core contemporary repertoire. Coming to them almost four decades later it is not easy to recapture the impact they must have had in the 1960s, let alone the 1940s. Yet even when they were premièred they were accepted as among the least controversial of Cage’s works: the somewhat conservative journal Musical America welcomed them as ‘quite enchanting’.

Cage had devised the prepared piano in 1940. Wanting a percussion ensemble for a dance piece but having room only for a piano, he began to transform the instrument into a substitute gamelan. In the Sonatas and Interludes he explored the timbral possibilities further, here and there extending them by the use of contact mikes. The 16 sonatas (not a description of their form, but reclaiming the original connotation of the term ‘to sound’) and four interludes came at the culmination of Cage’s fully notated period: ‘I still wanted to possess sounds, to be able to repeat them,’ he said. Soon after he would embrace indeterminacy and chance.

These pieces, often structured in accordance with complicated mathematical schemes, leave little to chance. The preparation of the piano is a long and meticulous process, and Cage provided precise directions. Nevertheless, performers do need to make choices, and the results can be very different.

The benchmark recording by Aleck Karis is certainly an impressive, powerful, virtuoso performance. Yet, compared with Takahashi’s fresh-sounding reading, with its endlessly subtle gradations and reflective approach, evoking the image of a musical archaeologist’s brush carefully revealing ancient, magical inscriptions, Karis sounds too burly, sometimes seeming to fall prey to the contemporary tendency to confuse aggression with conviction.

The predominance of lively rhythms and short, easily absorbed melodies, makes these pieces unusually appealing. Takahashi is a marvellous guide through their mystery and strange beauty.