Even those who programmed this concert had to admit that an evening of works by John Cage was perhaps out of place in a series devoted to Aaron Copland. The two composers may have shared a nationality and, roughly speaking, a lifetime but, in most ways, there the similarities end. However, they did possess a comparable clarity of vision, even though the results of their work were startlingly different.
Arch-experimentalist Cage is a fascinating figure among the greats of the 20th century, not least because of his contribution to debates surrounding the aesthetics and the ownership of musical composition.
In Ten, written in 1991, the year before Cage's death, each player is guided not by a conductor but by a stopwatch. The notes are written with no fixed duration, but are set within "time brackets", and must all be played once, in order, before that time is out. The volume and length of each note is up to the individual player. To what extent, then, can such a work be said to be Cage's own composition? And, if there is no central force or figure deciding where each note or noise should go, can the performance really be defined as music? It has to be said, unfortunately, that it can be more interesting to ponder the idea behind some of Cage's works than to listen to them.
The First Construction (in Metal) had opened the concert with a bang, employing a whole array of percussion instruments, including five thunder sheets. But even the committed playing of the Sinfonietta (and the sight of the percussionist solemnly using a Nescafé tin as a makeshift instrument) couldn't quite make Ten come alive.
Seated scattered around the stage, the 10 musicians did create atmospheric layers of sound that seemed to unfold and then merge again. But, while a sense of tension was woven in the opening minutes from the idea that nobody in the hall knew exactly what sounds the next few seconds might bring, it proved impossible to sustain that feeling for the work's half-hour duration.
The second half of the programme was devoted to the 16 Dances, written 40 years earlier. Cage's trademark "chance operations" came into play here - he selected his musical phrases from 64 examples written on a chessboard-like chart, moving from one to the next as though playing a game. Yet the way this raw material is put together is all down to Cage's artistry - and, as was proved in this convincing reading under conductor Paul Zukofsky, the work's sense of direction is all the stronger for it.
