BBC Music Magazine
01-Sep-1999

"Cage's prepared piano music might be better known by reputation than by acquaintance, but this excellent new release, part of Naxos's praiseworthy ongoing exploration of seminal 20th-century works, should persuade more people to step into the composer's eccentric sound-world. Boris Berman gives a sensitive, closely considered performance of the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, written in the late Forties, and seems to relish every sound he makes. The very close recording allows the listener to hear every sound and every resonance in minute detail, and it is the strange beauty of the sounds themselves under Berman's tight control that makes this disc such a joy."

Pianiste

"est remarquablement servi dans [son] but par Boris Berman, le pianiste d'origine russe, qui prouve par cet enregistrement que l'imagination sonore de Cage n'est pas entamé par le temps. L'interprétation de ses sonates...developpe tout au long des dix-neuf pièces une continuité qui s'empare de notre imagination."

Cage "is served remarkably well in [his] goal by Boris Berman, the Russian-born pianist who proves in this recording that Cage's sonic imagination has not diminished over time. The performance of these sonatas...develops over the course of these nineteen pieces a continuity that takes hold of our imagination."

By Christopher Morley
Birmingham Post
21-Aug-1999

"Cage's post-war coupling of prepared-piano sonorities (strings damped with screws, rubbers, strips of plastic and the like) with Scarlattian formal miniatures is here given a wonderfully robust, genuine interpretation by Boris Berman. The Gamelan sounds so sought-after by Cage in his exploration of oriental philosophies are here vividly evoked. Nothing to frighten on this release: do go out, buy and enjoy."