Christian Wolff

This double CD collects the piano music Christian Wolff wrote between 1951 and 1961. In those years he was closely associated with John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and David Tudor, the circle later called the New York School. Feldman would describe Wolff as "my artistic conscience". The first disc holds the solo works, played by John Tilbury, a pianist long identified with this repertoire and with Feldman. The second adds Wolff himself at a second piano for the duos, and Eddie Prévost on percussion for Trio II. Two members of AMM, a group Wolff has often played with, thus meet the composer on his own ground.

The music is sparse and exact. As the booklet notes by Michael Parsons explain, it comes from the mechanical action of the piano and stresses its percussive side. There is no pedal for continuity and no legato, only sharp attacks and single sounds isolated by silence. Disc one runs from the four pieces For Prepared Piano (1951) through For Piano I and II and Suite I to For Piano with Preparations (1957) and For Pianist (1959). The preparations follow the method Cage devised in the 1940s, with screws, coins, wood and rubber placed between the strings. In the 1957 piece the strings are also touched, plucked and muted. Disc two moves to Duo for Pianists I and II, Duet I for piano four hands and Trio II, built on cues and open forms. Prévost's triangle and drum sounds appear only fleetingly, and the four hands of the two pianists often seem to merge into two. Reviewing the set in Jazzword in 2003, Ken Waxman recommended it first to listeners after "a superior Wolff souvenir".

Released by Matchless Recordings in 2002 as MRCD 51, a double CD recorded at Gateway Studios in Kingston upon Thames in 2001 and 2002, with a cover by Tristram Wolff.