Enormous technical requirements make the Cage's Etudes Boreales a highly virtuosic work, which requires an extreme sensitivity of feeling for the coordination of fingers, instrument, and intellect. On this CD it is presented in versions: for piano solo and later for cello solo with piano solo. As in the sister works, Etudes Australes and Freeman Etudes, Cage based the Etudes Boreales on a star chart. He used the chart of the northern sky that the Czech astronomer Antonín Becvár made in 1962. The time length piece 26'1.1499'' – Friedrich Gauwerky chooses the first 640.3 seconds for this recording – documents the composer’s retreat from an intentional determination of the sounds. And also the Harmonies welcome the creative possibilities of whatever happens next.