1991 release ** How well early, full notated, Cage is standing the test of time, especially the works for prepared piano and for percussion. The Perilous Night is a 12-minute prepared piano piece completed two years before Cage started his classic Sonatas and Interludes. The Perilous Night, which uses fairly elaborate preparations, is nothing like so well known, although included on Jeanne Kirstein's important 1970 CBS double LP. The connection between Cage and Jasper Johns was re-emphasized when the painter started a series of Perilous Night works containing a page of Cage's score in 1982. One is reproduced in colour on the front of the booklet. Before that Cage got the idea for the title from an Irish myth about a bed placed on a floor of polished jasper! Four walls, a ballet score for solo piano using the white notes only, is very much his own kind of piece, with his typically disengaged continuity. The subject of Merce Cunningham's ballet is an exploration of the disturbed mind—this was the period of Cage's divorce and his move towards Zen Buddhism as an alternative to psycho-analysis. The pacing of the near hour-long suite of dances is often more Eastern than Western. Listeners must be prepared for long silences: Joan La Barbara's chaste tones provide a welcome contrast, if too rare. But thanks to the successful assaults of minimalism the time-scale of such Cage works is now seeming much less daunting, although there is a sense of going round in circles with the dance element missing. All the same, Cage's repetitive routines have gained a new richness in retrospect. He was right after all! The performances by Margaret Leng Tan, described by The Village Voice of New York as ''the world's premiere string piano virtuoso'', seem admirable and so is the recording.'"