Alexei Lubimov (piano), Natalia Pschenitschnikova (voice), ECM New Series 476 4933 ****

John Cage (1912-1992), a great bogeyman of 20th-century music, wrote a silent piece, and pieces using chance operations. But the Cage represented here predates those exploits. There are songs, sometimes plaintive, sometimes capricious-sounding. There are pieces for prepared piano, that Cagean adaptation with rubber and nuts and bolts (literally) between the strings that turn the piano into a kind of one-person percussion ensemble. And there's The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, setting part of Joyce's Finnegans Wake for voice and closed piano, the case of the instrument used to percussive effect. It's music which is both calculated and naive, using see-through strategies to turn the musical norms of its time (the 1930s and 1940s) on their head. Beware the heavily accented pronunciation in the performances of these experienced Russian advocates of Cage. See url.ie/7ebo