Darmstadt courses meant Modern music was ready to thrive beyond the so called National schools, and a whole new musical genre - conceived by creators belonging to very different musical scenes - was ready to flourish.
Interestingly enough for a Country that had given very few meaningful contributions to instrumental music over the last two centuries, many of the most peculiar personalities in Darmstadt were Italian. Among these young composers, Luciano Berio's figure stood out thanks to his extraordinary skills and masterly technique, always driven by a compelling yet natural leaning towards experimentation.
Without hesitation, I consider Berio the most pivotal Master in my Country's musical history since Monteverdi, and - like with the great cremonese - his music will live on for ages.
We are glad to present here a few celebrated recordings of his mastepieces. The amazing Sinfonia, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1969 is a classic: with its magic muted chorus at the very beginning, and the celebrated 3rd movement, where glimpses of the milestones of music history - from Beethoven's Eroica to Debussy's La mer - float on the unremitting tempo of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony's Scherzo, or the heavenly 4th movement, where an otherworldy chorus reminds us of Ligeti's most atmospheric language.
The magnificent Folk Songs are of course Berio's most popular work along with his stunning solo works known as Sequenzas; yet another classic of sheer beauty is to be found in Rendering, Berio's reworking of Schubert's sketches to his 10th Symphony, in which the genius from Imperia implements an astonishing new technique by "filling the gaps" between the fragments with his musical sensitivity, rather than artificially joining them together. The result is just sublime and will have you in bewilderment, particularly when Schubert's classic shapes give in to Berio's unmistakable modern language in a continuum of intoxicating musical beauty.
To complete today's post, a few masterpieces by one of Berio's Masters, Luigi Dallapiccola, including his operatic masterpiece Il Prigioniero, and his poignant classic Canti di Prigionia.
Luciano Berio
Concerto II "Echoing Curves"
Rendering (on Fragments of Franz Schubert's Symphony D936a)
4 versioni originali della "Ritirata notturna di Madrid (from Luigi Boccherini)
Andrea Lucchesini, Piano
London Symphony Orchestra
Luciano Berio
RCA 09026 68894 2 (1997)








