A dream journey through 20th Century music; Twentieth Century classical music might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it figures in a concert series at The Sage Gateshead which should not be missed, argues David Whetstone.

Byline: David Whetstone 

THIS week the Northern Sinfonia leads us to where many of us might think we don't want to go - the 20th Century.

So many of classical music's boxoffice bankers come from earlier centuries when Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were in their pomp.

But in its 50th anniversary season the resident orchestra at The Sage Gateshead is to pay homage to the likes of Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Cage and Carter.

Under the heading Dreams and Ceremonies, the century has been split into concert-sized segments with tonight's offering devoted to 1906-30, Tuesday's to 1930-60, Thursday's to 1960-90 and Friday's to the years 1990 to 2006 (a little forgivable overspill into the 21st Century to accommodate the likes of Northumberland-based John Casken).

The Sage Gateshead's Simon Clugston, who programmed the series, says: "The big shift in music as it entered the 20th Century was away from a formal symphonic structure and into a much more open interpretation of where the imagination can go.

"What I want to do here is to show that, while it's not the only journey you can take through the 20th Century, it is a journey nevertheless.

You will travel very fast through each decade and get a sense of how things moved.

"I think if you can get to all four concerts you will have an extraordinary experience. You will find that there is a huge range of work on offer but when you get to the end you will remember clearly how the journey started." Forget the closed minds of the arch-traditionalists, largely a hangover from less enlightened times. This series is a must for anyone interested in classical - and indeed modern - music who relishes the chance to hear in one week compositions that come along all too rarely and hardly ever together.

The turbulence of the 20th Century, characterised by the two world wars, a Cold War and dramatic technological advances, sent classical music into some dark places but also elicited some beautiful work.

All the composers featured in Dreams and Ceremonies were innovators in their own way, none more so than John Cage, the much-derided proponent of chance music which is not dependent on a strict score.

Last year Baltic played host to his Variations VII, featuring household implements and live sound streams piped in from various points around Tyneside, as part of the AV Festival.

What it lacked in harmony, it more than made up for in drama and spectacle.

Tomorrow, in a programme also featuring works by Stravinsky, Messiaen and Stockhausen, comes Cage's even more famous 4'33'' in which the orchestra offers us four minutes and 33 seconds of silence - or, rather, non-playing.

It is said that Cage got the idea after entering a sound-proof chamber at Harvard University. He expressed surprise that he could still hear noises and it was explained to him that this would have been the sounds generated by his own circulatory and central nervous systems.

In 4'33'', dramatic proof that there's no such thing as silence, he was simply adding a conventional structure to the noises that surround us all the time, even when we are meant to be sitting still.

The premiere took place in New York in 1952 as part of a recital of contemporary piano music. Pianist David Tudor signalled the start of the performance by sitting down at the instrument and closing the lid. He opened it briefly at the close of each 'movement' and then closed it again.

The 4'33'' soloist on Tuesday will be regular Sinfonia pianist Kate Thompson. And before you make any jokes about money for old rope, you should know that she is also performing in Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time which was composed and performed in a concentration camp.

Simon Clugston says: "The nice thing about 4'33'' is that however many jokes you make, John Cage would have been laughing as well.

He had a fantastic sense of humour." Arguably the biggest favour any concert programmer can do Karlheinz Stockhausen - frequently derided by the Bach and Mozart fans in his day - is to make him follow 4'33''. After Tuesday's 'silence' - or period of coughing, shuffling and programme rustling - will come Stockhausen's Zyklus.

It may be apocryphal, but it is said that the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, when asked "Have you heard any Stockhausen?", replied: "No, but I believe I have trodden in some." The master of electronic music composed Zyklus in 1959 for a percussionist who can begin on any page of the score, read it left to right or even position it upside down. The soloist in Zyklus will be Simon Limbrick.

Though frequently derided, it must be said that Stockhausen, who died in 2007, is now regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th Century. The Beatles acknowledged their debt to him by including his face on the sleeve of their Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

American composer Elliott Carter, whose 1975 piece A Mirror on Which to Dwell features in Thursday's concert, was born in 1908 and is still going strong. In 2006, as part of a prolonged centenary programme, the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed a concert in London called Get Carter: The music of Elliott Carter.

Friday's concert concludes with the song cycle Farness by John Casken (interviewed in this month's Culture magazine - visit www.journallive.co.uk/culture) who lives near Rothbury but teaches at Manchester University.

The piece, based on poems by Carol Ann Duffy, the new Poet Laureate, was commissioned by The Sage Gateshead.

. For tickets to the Dreams and Ceremonies concerts, tel [phone]. If you buy a ticket to three of the concerts you can get a complementary ticket for the fourth. .

CAPTION(S):

INNOVATOR Composer John Cage, a champion of chance music.