John Cage

The sonata originated in the Baroque as a small, one-movement form, which nevertheless already contained the core of the sonata to be later developed and composed in elaborate detail by the Viennese Classics. In his Sonatas and Interludes John Cage stuck to the concise, one-movement form, thus establishing a link to Scarlatti and Bach's preludes as well as to Chopin's Préludes and Satie's piano pieces. Other than many of his later, freer works, these small but complex gems are fixed and noted down in every little detail. By way of an introduction Cage added a table to the sheet music edition also setting out the various preparations. The Sonatas and Interludes were always intended, not as an assembly of separate pieces but as one cycle, which Cage himself regarded as one of his "intentionally expressive compositions." The Sonatas and Interludes "are an attempt to express in music the 'permanent emotions' of Indian tradition: the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the mirthful, sorrow, fear, anger, the odious and their common tendency to toward tranquility." (John Cage) Markus Hinterhäuser succeeds in conveying all these virtues and emotions with exceptional brilliance.