John Cage, Herbert Henck

Locations shows the German pianist Herbert Henck in two roles at once. The first disc is his account of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946-48), the cycle that turned the piano into a one-person percussion ensemble. The second holds his own Festeburger Fantasien, two series of free improvisations that were his first recorded solo improvisations. Released by ECM New Series in 2003, the set puts the interpreter and the improviser side by side.

Everything was recorded at the Festeburgkirche in Frankfurt, the church that gives the improvisations their name. The Cage cycle and the second series of fantasies date from August 2000. The first series was taped in August 1993, when Henck was also making his ECM recording of Mompou. Markus Heiland and Andreas Neubronner were the Tonmeisters, Manfred Eicher produced, and Henck wrote the two essays in the booklet himself.

Cage dedicated the Sonatas and Interludes to the pianist Maro Ajemian. Its sixteen sonatas and four interludes are written for a piano with objects placed between its strings, and in this recording the bass notes boom while the upper register gives off a papery jingle. The cycle ends with Sonata XVI, the longest piece, after the paired Gemini sonatas written after a sculpture by Richard Lippold. In the fantasies Henck often plays against himself on two pianos, overdubbed, in pieces titled Duo and Solo. He has said that the Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott was on his mind shortly before the sessions. Tilman Urbach of Fono Forum heard Nancarrow and Bach in their dense, overlapping layers, and a player who stays a builder, attentive to foundation and balance, even at his most spontaneous.

In BBC Music Magazine, Jed Distler wrote that Cage's instrument "has rarely sounded as sumptuous, timbrally varied or alluring in terms of sheer colour as here." Christopher Ballantine in International Record Review said Henck "makes it dance" in the Cage, and praised the "fluid, unclassifiable beauty" of the improvisations. The album was a Stern des Monats in Fono Forum.

Double CD, ECM New Series 1842/43, first released in April 2003, with liner notes by Henck in German and English.