Latest releases reviewed
BERIO: SINFONIA; EKPHRASIS London Voices, Gothenburg SO / Peter Eötvös Deutsche Grammophon 20/21 477 5380 ***
Time magazine registered Luciano Berio's Sinfonia of 1968 as "a white-hot musical experience that invokes the malaise of the times better than all the sit-ins, beards, beads and clubbings that wrench contemporary life". The work, for eight amplified vocal soloists (originally the Swingle Singers) and a large orchestra with electric keyboards, sets texts by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Samuel Beckett, and includes a movement in memory of Martin Luther King, and another which is like a musical overpainting of the Scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony with quotations from Beethoven and Berlioz to Debussy, Strauss and Stravinsky. Peter Eötvös takes a rather cool and decidedly 21st-century view of the work, looking back, as it were, with a keen awareness of the later pieces by other hands which were to be influenced by Sinfonia. The late Ekphrasis (1996) is an extremely fluid, shimmering, gorgeously hued commentary on Berio's own, earlier Continuo. www.dgclassics.com
Michael Dervan
BERIO: ORCHESTRAL TRANSCRIPTIONS Fausto Ghiazza (clarinet), Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi/ Riccardo Chailly Decca 476 2830 ****
When Luciano Berio was commissioned by the Donaueschingen Festival to mark the Mozart bicentenary of 1956 with a work based on a specific aria, he was explicitly requested in the avant-garde spirit of the time to avoid actual quotation. At the other extreme, his orchestration of Brahms's F minor Clarinet Sonata faithfully essays an imitation of Brahmsian orchestral weight. The treatment of Purcell (a Hornpipe) and Bach (the uncompleted Contrapunctus XIX from the Art of Fugue) is comparatively straightforward. But Boccherini (the Ritirata notturna di Madrid) and Schubert (the sketches of an unfinished symphony treated in a 35-minute work called Rendering) receive more complex layering, with Berio's filling of the gaps in Schubert creating an effect like the fluctuating experience of someone drifting between dreaming and waking. Chailly and his Italian players give vividly characterised performances. www.deccaclassics.com
Michael Dervan
BOCCHERINI: SONATAS FOR TWO CELLOS Josep Bassal, Wolfgang Lehner (cellos) Naxos 8.557795 ***
This disc begins with minor pieces by two little-known Italians who worked in Spain: Giacomo Facco (1676-1753), credited with the first work for cello written in that country, and Domenico Porretti (died 1783). The shift of mode and mood for the three sonatas by Boccherini (1743-1805) is striking. Boccherini, one of the greatest cellists of his or any age, luxuriated in the sound of his instrument in a way few other composers have ever rivalled. The Sonata in C minor is a recent discovery. The Sonata in G, G5, is described as being for solo cello and bass, the Sonata in C, G74, as being for two cellos. All three bear the hallmark of Boccherini's unique imagination. The diligent performances are nicely coloured, but limited in agility, and insufficiently imaginative in the lesser music, which also includes an Andante Gracioso by Pablo Vidal (died 1808). www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
TCHAIKOVSKY: PIANO CONCERTO NO 1; THEME AND VARIATIONS; PROKOFIEV: PIANO CONCERTO NO 1; SUGGESTION DIABOLIQUE; BALAKIREV: ISLAMEY Andrei Gavrilov (piano), Philharmonia Orchestra/Riccardo Muti, London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle EMI Encore 586 8812 ***
These are among the recordings which in the late 1970s helped identify Andrei Gavrilov as a pianist with an exceptional bravura style and all the youthful inclinations to exploit it to the full. The gem is Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto, where the playing, irrepressible in spirit, is insouciant in the face of all technical challenges, and Rattle's partnership is as sharp as the pianism. The Tchaikovsky concerto with Muti leaves heavy fingerprints, but the brilliance of the flying octaves is awesome. The solo pieces by Balakirev and Prokofiev are breathtaking, the Theme and Variations by Tchaikovsky less successful. www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan
