Simone Mancusso (percussion) Stradivarius STR 33863 ***

If you're a fan of the kind of percussion playing exemplified by Evelyn Glennie, this may not be the disc for you. Three performances of pieces by John Cage for amplified plant materials or actual plants are at the heart of the programme – some of Cage's inspiration came from twanging the spines of a dried cactus. Child of Treeis followed by two performances of Branches, and each performance is itself followed by a track of silence (11 minutes of it in total). The pieces, written in 1975 and 1976, are unusual for Cagein being frameworks for improvisation. Salvatore Sciarrino's Il legno e la parola (2004) is a skittering, flurrying piece for solo marimba. And the disc ends with a marimba version of Giacinto Scelsi's 1976 Maknongan, which takes a microscopic lens to just three notes. The pieces are quite fascinating, but the playing time is very short: 35 minutes without the silences. See url.ie/7lbq