the differences between Johann Sebastian Bach and John Cage are obvious. They are so obvious that you could be tempted to think that Tristano consciously decided on a high-contrast album programme. Which is certainly true to an extent. Only in the case of bachCage, the artist wasn’t out for provocation just for the sake of it. In fact, this album begins to unfold only at the second and third glance. In the foreground is Tristano’s idiosyncratic and very personal handling of his musical pioneers, Bach and Cage. In all of his precise interpretation of Bach, the music is very much alive and sounds conspicuously wiry and percussive. Probably in part due to the recording’s metallic, occasionally tough sound. Production partner Moritz von Oswald’s involvement becomes even more apparent in Tristano’s Cage recordings. Preparation of the instrument has given way to post-processing aided by studio technology subtly added by Von Oswald and Tristano. And so, the sound of Tristano’s dreamy interpretation of John Cage’s In a Landscape brings to mind distant Gamelan music echoes. The interludes by Tristano himself have a fey and disembodied effect due to the targeted use of reverb effects, and – thanks to filter technology – the final Bach Menuet II from French Suite no. 1 features the sound of a musical clock.
Another, deeper aspect comes to bear on this album, because his subjective choice of pieces sees Francesco Tristano organically blend Bach and Cage, blurring borders while emphasising shared elements. One of these being that both masters are connected by a mathematically oriented approach to composition. Tristano’s selection of pieces and their sequence, some of which has been tested in a live context, are based on tonal convergence, on cyclical structures and their polyphonic construction as duets. Tristano has also found spiritual common ground in both composers, which he conveys through his own compositions.
Perhaps Tristano is one of the first representatives of a new generation of musicians who no longer belong to a specific school. This generation also takes advantage of the fact that practically the whole repertoire of all music ever recorded is available on the Internet. The most diverse kinds of music stand alongside each other, taken out of their typical context and available in some would say, a more democratic form. Tristano makes use of this, stamping his mark on the world of music and providing a fresh and unique sound, unlike anything that has been heard before.

The Solo for Piano is part of the legendary “Concert for Piano and Orchestra.” It is an indeterminate work, consisting of 63 pages made of 84 different types of composition, each appearing as its own type of notation. The performer creates his own performance by choosing which pages to play and in which order; pages can also be omitted. Cage began by choosing, using chance operations, a way of composing based on either his Music for Piano series – single notes, or on Winter Music – chords, or aggregates of notes. Chance operations would also determine whether a variation on one of these two types would be used or whether something completely new, with its own subsequent variations, would be written. When Cage wrote the Two Pieces for Piano (1935), he was already studying with Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg’s influence on Cage undoubtedly accounts for the music’s 12-tone-row-based organization, but Cage’s own version of this system had the twelve note series broken down into short pitch/rhythm cells. Later Cage began a study of Indian philosophy and came to believe that the purpose of music is “to imitate nature in its manner of operation” and “to sober and quiet the mind thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences.” These principles underlie another set of piano pieces that Cage wrote in the months May to August, 1946, entitled again, Two Pieces for Piano (1946). These later pieces are more extensively worked out and possess a sense of urgency and heightened drama, brought about in the first piece by long silences and in the second by a quicker flow and variety of musical events distributed over a greater range of the instrument. The silences heard in the first piece are an early example of what later became a pillar of Cage’s thought and music — the primacy of silence.