What a splendid idea to make a feature of Cage's percussion music from 1939-43! At this time he was a pioneer of the percussion orchestra, following in the footsteps of Varese who, as Cage said, ''fathered forth noise into twentieth-century music''. But Cage's works sound less menacing than Ionisation. And he helps himself to unusual sources of sound such as car brake drums, tin cans, thunder sheets and gongs lowered into buckets of water, without going as far as Harry Partch, who invented his own unique instruments, making it virtually impossible for anybody else to play his music. This is not the Cage who abandons responsibility to chance or who leaves the performers to work out the details from the composer's blueprint, as he did later on. These are lively, inventive and thoroughly idiosyncratic studies in sonority making a balanced programme of what ought to be the popular Cage, as typical of his approach as the prepared piano. These classics are now claiming their place in the repertoire. The Helios Quartet have been performing them for some years and it forms one of the most attractive releases in Wergo's John Cage Edition.
Amores—also a classic with two other recordings on offer—is an oddly balanced but satisfying four-movement work which unites two aspects of Cage at this period. The first and last movements are for prepared piano, the two middle ones for percussion alone. The composer says the work is ''an attempt to express in combination the erotic and the tranquil, two of the permanent emotions of the Indian tradition.'' But this sort of information is not to be found in the CD booklet-notes, which are too confined to generalities. It is particularly valuable to have all three Constructions rather than just the second and third, which are already available. For years these works were rather indifferently performed with rhythmic inaccuracies, possibly because the instrumentation was so unusual. The players of the Helios Quartet have this aspect well under control, although occasionally there are questions of balance between different strands—the string piano (piano played directly on the strings) gets a bit lost at the start of Construction No. 1, for example.
Imaginary Landscape No. 2 (also called March) is an amazing demonstration of what can be done with a do-it-yourself ensemble of tin cans, drums, gongs, metal waste-basket, buzzers, ratchet, lion's roar, plus the triumphal appearance of a booming conch shell near the end. There's a photograph of the Helios playing this work but the instrumentation is not specified, which is a pity, since the eccentric line-up is part of Cage's riotous achievement and our enjoyment. She is Asleep, the only work here with a vocal component, is nicely sung by Martine Vivard with prepared piano, as elsewhere, from Isabelle Berteletti. Everything is well recorded in a release which can only be seen as a demonstration, if one is needed, of Cage's purely musical origins.'