No self-respecting survey of John Cage's music would be complete without a performance of his most famous, most notorious, work. So the first orchestral concert in the BBC's weekend-long Cage fest at the Barbican ended with the UK premiere of the orchestral version of 4' 33", performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. The three-movement work, in which not a note is played, leaving the composition to be determined by the extraneous sounds in the auditorium, is far more frequently talked about than experienced and here it generated a real sense of occasion. A few coughs apart, the audience was truly silent - when somebody began a whispered conversation soon after the piece began he was quickly shushed - and the orchestra sat on the stage as if ready to play as soon as the conductor raised his baton.
It was a curiosity, certainly, but not one that in this context offering any a real insight into Cage's musical thought; those look likely to be few and far between in these three days of concerts, talks, films and foyer events.
It was Arnold Schoenberg, who briefly taught the young Cage in the US in the 1930s, who got him just right. Cage was, he observed, "not a composer at all, but an inventor - of genius", and it has always been the ideas behind Cage's music rather than the compositions themselves that have proved influential.
The programmes this weekend as good as admit that, and certainly lack the courage of their supposed convictions.
While it is reasonable to programme works by those American composers who were influenced by him - such as Earle Brown and Morton Feldman - most of the composers featured had only the vaguest connection with Cage, and seemed to have been included only to get bums on seats.
Why otherwise did the whole event begin with a piece as second-rate as William Schuman's New England Triptych, and also include a very ordinary account of Copland's vapid El Salon Mexico?
It is curious to begin a festival devoted to a prolific figure like Cage and include only 20 minutes of his own music.
Apart from 4' 33", there was the early, and rather atypically modal, ballet The Seasons. Perhaps things will improve, loosen up, as the weekend gains momentum; this was, though, a profoundly dull beginning.
· John Cage: Uncaged is at the Barbican, London EC2, until tomorrow. Box office: 0845 120 7550.
