Luciano Berio / Bruno Maderna - Electronic Works (1992 compilation of pieces created 1958-62)

Great collection of early electronic/ electroacoustic/ tape music by Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and Bruno Maderna (1920-1973), in the years following their joint founding of the Studio Di Fonologia Musicale Di Radio Milano.  After WDR Köln and GRM Paris, this was intended as a third resource in Europe for producing new music with innovative electronics and tape manipulation.

Over an hour of engrossing sounds on this BV Haast CD effectively gives us a short album's worth from each composer, starting with Berio and the jittering sounds of Momenti (1960).  The avant-garde classical singer Cathy Berberian (who was married to Berio at the time) is heavily featured on the rest of the material, with cut-up fragments of James Joyce (1958) and then in a lengthy exploration of more primal vocal sounds on Visage (1961).

From Maderna we get two sixteen-minute pieces, starting with Le Rire (1962).  It's a great immersion in electronic sound and fragments of laughter and chatter that might be my pick of the disc.  Lastly, Invenzione Su Una Voce aka Dimenzione II (1960) features Cathy Berberian performing vocal phonemes prepared by the German poet Hans G Helm.  All incredible stuff to listen to, especially if you liked previous Luigi Nono posts.

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Berio/Maderna at SGTG:

The New Music, Vol. 2 (scroll past big list)

Berio at SGTG:

Coro

Sequenza IXb

Masterworks Of The 20th Century 10xCD box set - posting now complete

Disc 1 - Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau Sans Maître/Livre Pour Cordes - posted here
Disc 2 - Toru Takemitsu: Asterism, Requiem, Green, Dorian Horizon - posted here
Disc 3 - Igor Stravinsky: Agon/Gunter Schuller: 7 Studies On Themes Of Paul Klee - posted here
Disc 4 - Charles Ives: The "Concord" Sonata - posted here
Disc 5 - George Crumb: Voice Of The Whale/Night Of The Four Moons etc - posted here
Disc 6 - Harry Partch: The World Of Harry Partch - posted here
Disc 7 - Extended Voices - posted here
Disc 8 - Xenakis, Del Tredici, Stockhausen, Cage, Crumb - posted here
Disc 9 - Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center - posted here
Disc 10 - The New Music, Volume 2 - see below.

"The New Music" was a short series by RCA Victrola, the first three of which were Italian recordings conducted by Bruno Maderna.  For the "Prophets Of The New" reissue series/the final disc in this box set, this CD presented all of Vol. 2 plus half of Vol. 3, spotlighting the legendary Italian flautist Severino Gazzelloni.

The first two tracks are chamber pieces that higlight the range of sonorities that Boulez and Haubenstock-Ramati could conjure up for flute, before a temporary switch in lead instrument gives us Maderna's Concerto for Oboe (played by Lothar Faber) and Chamber Orchestra.

Back with Gazzelloni for the tracks from The New Music Vol. 3, Y Su Sangre Ya Viene Cantando is the middle section of Luigi Nono's Epitaph For Lorca, with a definite Spanish tinge to its rhythmic orchestration.  Lastly, Berio's Serenade I for Flute & 14 Instruments is a great evolving dialogue between the soloist and other instruments.

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