The Wire

This album kicks off in fine style with UK soprano Clare Lesser’s rhythmically sure-footed vocal realisation of Cage’s indeterminate score One12. Detaching language and utterance from their conventionally communicative function, Lesser’s performance foregrounds the intrinsic musicality of speech. Sculptures Musicales, taking shape through the onset and decay of sounds produced by mainly percussive instruments, is quietly thought-provoking in its spatial implications and air of ritualistic action. Two further Cage compositions, Radio Music and the epic Speech, both from the 1950s, use radios as instrumentation. As practical demonstrations of Cage’s experimental philosophy they retain some interest, although their status as persistent objects, recorded artefacts consciously crafted for repeated listening, surely goes against the grain of Cage’s thinking.