In a Landscape -Piano Works : Stephen Drury

John Cage: In a Landscape - Piano Works

In A Landscape
Music For Marcel Duchamp
Souvenir
A Valentine Out Of Season
Suite For Toy Piano
Bacchanale
Prelude For Meditation
Dream

Stephen Drury - piano, prepared piano, toy piano

Digital Recording: 1993, 1994

Selections recorded October 4-7, 1993 and May 4, 1994.
Even though this fine John Cage recital was evidently marketed as an "ambient" album, pianist Stephen Drury hasn't really softened the dynamics even while playing some of Cage's more pleasingly diatonic scales ("In A Landscape," "Dream"). And accessible as this release might be for the sympathetically minded listener, it is still very much in the John Cage idiom, the one that he established in a straight line directly from Erik Satie, the original "ambient" composer. There's sonic variation here as well, what with the prepared piano pieces--the magnificent "Bacchanale" and "A Valentine Out Of Season"--as well as "Suite For Toy Piano," a quirky sonic world all its own. Plus the medieval-sounding "Souvenir," a late-composed, severe piece for organ--most definitely not dinner party-friendly.