Two²

Digipack first edition
“No stopwatch is required for the realisation of Two²; John Cage entrusts the pacing of this piece to the intuition of its performers. Pianists Philip Thomas and Mark Knoop bring feline touch and expert attentiveness to their placement of allocated notes, as they extend the music beyond two hours
Two² emerges from their close collaborative focus as tactile and tactful music, as precise and deliberate as calligraphic strokes inscribed in luminously blank space. In fact, Cage drew inspiration from this composition from the syllabic patterning of Japanese renga verse form. Duration and dynamics locate this particular performance in the vicinity of Morton Feldman’s later music, but although it shares the poise of those long, quiet works Two2 is less prone to ambivalence, less inconclusive in its inflections and more firmly settled within its own stretched out contours.” Julian Cowley, The Wire