Record of the day: Luciano Berio, “Voci”
Luciano Berio
Voices (BMG CD RD87898)
Let’s take a break from our holiday escapades to remember one of the greatest composers in history, Luciano Berio.
Perhaps someone will think that listening to contemporary classical music in August is punitive. But they are wrong; Berio’s compositions are certainly complex but they have nothing to do with the retro/avant-garde that has shown off hundreds of mediocre pieces over the last forty years, too often destined for a tiny clique of relatives and friends.
Far from any idea of an artist locked in his own little garden, Berio offers music that stimulates the heart and brain along aesthetic paths that embrace novelty without erasing the past.
This is particularly true for the compositions in which Berio approached the world of popular music, seen without any folkloristic temptation, but as an authentic reservoir of musical vitality to be confronted by igniting one’s imagination. This CD presents three absolute masterpieces composed by Berio between 1981 and 1984. “Voci” is
a concerto for viola and two instrumental groups that reworks and develops ideas drawn from ancient Sicilian songs. As he always did in his work, Berio does not limit himself to arranging and orchestrating the melodies but transforms them with a process of continuous thematic proliferation that at the same time is used for the construction of harmonic fields in perpetual change. The solo viola weaves a dialogue with the ensemble from the first minute, which in turn contradicts and comments on the main line, completely skipping the typical conventions of traditional concert writing. The music is wonderful, lyrically expressive and never falls into the traps of the obvious, highlighting the qualities of the soloist Aldo Bennici, who masters with skill the very difficult solo part that Berio composed for him.
The same heated relationship between solo instrument and orchestra is found in “Corale per violino e archi”, which takes its cue from the “Sequenza VIII per violino solo” (and features an excellent soloist, Carlo Chiarappa), while “Requies” is a page of suspended enchantment that draws a fragile and evanescent melody in the air to recall Cathy Berberian, the great singer to whom Berio was tied by marriage and for whom he wrote some of his most memorable pages.
Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical subjects.
This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: Un disco per ogni giorno dell’anno” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.
