Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury

John Tilbury plays the piano music that Cornelius Cardew wrote before his turn to political song, from the February Pieces of 1959 to 1961 to Unintended Piano Music of 1970. Tilbury was among Cardew's closest musical associates, in AMM and the Scratch Orchestra, and later became his biographer. Matchless called this a long overdue recording of works that reflect Cardew's preoccupation of those years with sonority and touch.

Tilbury recorded the programme at the Royal College of Music in London in the early months of 1996, with Mary Hughes as engineer. Eddie Prévost joins on tam-tam for an excerpt from Treatise. Between the early and late pieces come Volo Solo, the three Winter Potatoes and Material. Reviewing the disc in The Wire in November 1996, Andy Hamilton heard the spiky, dissonant idiom of Stockhausen's early Klavierstücke behind these pieces. He noted that Volo Solo is played as two superimposed versions and Material as three. He singled out Unintended Piano Music for its slow repeated bass figures and jazzy chords, and concluded that the disc "shows Cardew at his best". Volo Solo was conceived for Tilbury himself, and Cardew asked for a reckless tempo so that, in his words, "the piano should seem to be breaking apart".

Published by Matchless Recordings as MRCD29, a CD first issued in 1996 and later reissued in a remixed and redesigned edition. Liner notes by Michael Parsons, cover by Keith Rowe using a detail from Octet '61 for Jasper Johns.