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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pw: sgtg

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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Luciano Berio - Coro (1980)

Italian composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003) might have been particularly notable for his use of electronics, but here's something equally striking that's purely choral-orchestral.  Completed in 1977, Coro runs continuously for nearly an hour, packing in folk lyrics from around the world (sung by soloists) and poetry by Pablo Neruda (sung in chorus) into 31 sections.  The vast array of languages that the texts draw from were translated by Berio to just Italian, French, Spanish, English and German.

Berio took inspiration from the contemporary turmoil in Italy, and the work returns several times to the Neruda line "Come and see the blood in the streets".  In terms of the listening experience, Coro is dense and powerful, especially when the 40 voices and 40 instruments all come together, and took me a few listens to navigate.  It runs on its own internal logic, often reusing bits of text in different contexts, and the massed climaxes with the Neruda text maintain the dramatic momentum.  Hugely rewarding stuff for deep listening.

Original LP cover, 1980

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Also recommended at SGTG:
Luigi Nono: Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz

Daniel Kientzy - Musiques Contemporaines Pour Saxophones (1988)

The great avant-garde/modern classical sax master Daniel Kientzy, previously highlighted starring in ensemble works here and here, returns to these pages in an early compilation of pieces for solo saxophone.  Or indeed more than one sax at once, or sax plus electronics - it's all here at its most mind-bending, in one piece each from the seven composers listed on the cover.

If you love solo saxophone doing insane, improbable things, this is the album for you for sure; if you think it might be a bit much to sit through 71 minutes of this stuff, I recommend taking it in stages.  Personal highlights would be the blasting opener, the overture to Aurel Stroe's Eumenides opera (can never resist a Romanian composer) and the closer, Horacio Vaggione's Thema, that sounds like it's being played inside a gigantic cement mixer.  Then enjoy the frenzy of tape effects layered on to Aulodie by François-Bernard Mâche, then the slowly integrating layers of the Stockhausen piece, then the rest will be a breeze.  I promise.

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