Orchestra 2001's John Cage centennial

For most of us, the composer John Cage is noted for his clownishly eccentric compositions and his outrageous statements.

His most famous piece— 4'33''— consists of a pianist sitting motionless at a piano for four minutes and 33 seconds. Cage's comments on his chosen art include his reflection that "much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom."

How can anyone take such a "composer" seriously? The answer involves looking beyond his admittedly bizarre antics.

Some of Cage's odder works can be linked to a serious purpose. 4'33'' jibes at the whole idea of concert performance and invites us to focus on the sounds drowned out by our activities. Imaginary Landscape No. 4, for 12 portable radios, captures the mystery of the invisible messages that continuously traverse the modern world, as each radio plays a different frequency and 24 performers change the frequencies and volumes according to the instructions in Cage's score.

Orchestra 2001 is presenting a three-concert series this month in honor of Cage's 100th birthday. Music director James Freeman opened the celebration with two examples of the seriousness embedded in Cage's quirkiness.

One haunting note

In Inlets, three musicians create static-like sounds by manipulating conch shells in front of microphones. At first the effects seem odd and even ugly. Then they begin to evoke the whispers and rushes of the sea.

The piece ends when a fourth musician stands and sounds a single haunting note on a fourth shell— the horn of Pan invoking the mystery at the heart of nature.

Credo in Us combines piano and percussion, with a recording that includes music and voices. Majestic orchestral music mingles with radio commercials, a melodious piano solo and sounds that suggest the endless bustle and chatter of human life.

You can hear Credo in Us as a satire on the cacophony of the modern world, but Cage's title suggests another attitude toward the sonic variety show. Credo means, "I believe." The title is an obvious variation on the Credo in Unum Deum of the Latin Mass.

Like a movie scene

The next two items on the program proved that Cage was capable of creating pieces that most of us would consider music.

Cage's Melodies for Violin and Keyboard (1950) teamed Freeman, in his role as pianist, with the popular Philadelphia free-lance violinist Igor Szwec. The first section created a gentle mood that reminded me of movie scenes in which someone nostalgically remembers a violin heard in his younger days. The finale resembled Shostakovich in one of his sweeter moods, with rolling Slavic rhythms accentuated by a driving piano.

Another popular Philadelphian, Charles Abramovic, took the stage for the first four interludes in Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946-48), after which Freeman played the first Interlude. (Abramovic and Freeman will complete the series in the concerts scheduled for September 21 at the Barnes and September 23 at Swarthmore College's Lang Hall.)

Barbaric process

Abramovic and Freeman both noted that the Sonatas and Interludes are surprisingly "sweet" pieces and sound even sweeter after the piano has been "prepared" with coins, tacks and other objects inserted between the strings.

The process sounds barbaric, and it can yield ugly, barbaric sounds in the wrong hands. Cage, who invented the idea, used it to expand the attractive sounds that pianists can produce with their instruments.

Abramovic compared the brief sonatas to Scarlatti's short sonatas for harpsichord. Anyone who enjoys those works would probably enjoy Cage's.

Typewriter keys

The second half was a disappointment. Cage's Song Books comprises more than 70 pieces that can be performed in any order, in any number, in a variety of ways, including theater. In the pieces selected for this performance, electronic sounds mingled with ordinary noises like the whirr of a blender and the clack of typewriter keys. Dancer Megan Bridge added a routine that included hair combing and the operation of the blender.

It could have been another paean to common life, but it felt like a letdown after the violin and piano music that finished the first half. One of the electronic sounds was so loud and high-pitched that it could be considered damaging to the eardrums. I wasn't the only listener who reflexively stuck his fingers into his ears.

Solo for Sliding Trombone is essentially a series of sounds produced with a variety of mutes and ingenious manipulations of the trombone's tubing. It was entertaining, to be sure, but more of a demonstration than a composition.

Zany finale

The program ended with the first performance of 4'33'' that I've attended since I first heard about it when I was a teenager. Freeman, who owns a first edition of the score, read from Cage's instructions.

Contrary to popular belief, 4'33'' wasn't composed for the piano; it was merely performed that way at its premiere. Cage specified that it could be performed by any number of musicians, silently holding any number of instruments. Freeman conducted an ensemble version featuring most of the musicians who had participated in the concert.

It's a good-natured jape that brought the afternoon to an appropriately zany finale. But I would be remiss in my critical duties if I didn't note that it was flawed by the absence of Igor Szwec, who had to feed a parking meter. If Szwec had been able to participate, the audience might have been treated to a definitive performance of one of the seminal works of 20th Century composition.