The birth of a musical work is a complex and mysterious matter – although often unintentionally so. It is perhaps for this reason that the composer is often reticent to describe the genesis of his works. (Luciano Berio)
Luciano Berio’s Glosse was premièred today exactly 20 years ago by the Lotus String Quartet. If you want to find out more about the story behind Berio’s string quartet, just follow this link:
Our latest newsletter is out now – in case you didn’t receive it: you can now view the full study score of Luciano Berio’s Un re in ascolto on our website.
Paul Esterhazy’s new production of the azione musicale in 2 parts will première on 23 May at the Staatstheater Kassel.
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Listening Lab has won the Best Print Award at the Music Teacher Awards for Excellence held on the 12th March in London. The Listening Lab series provides music educators with practical and inspiring approaches for children, young people and adults to connect with contemporary music allowing for a deeper understanding of the work. The series so far (by Constanze Wimmer / Helmut Schmidinger and Veronika Großberger / Johannes Voit) has also received recommendations from the Association of German School Musicians. |
For more information and sample pages go to:
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“Horizons” summarizes the most interesting events held by the Lithuanian Ensemble Network between 2009 and 2014 and documents its best recordings, including Lied and O, King by Luciano Berio, Nichtstück and Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Vykintas Baltakas and Am Horizont by Wolfgang Rihm.
Find out more on the website of the Lithuanian Ensemble Network.
Musical thought today must be able to interact with the new technologies and to adapt itself creatively to every kind of space, exploring and reshaping it acoustically. The image of music as sound architecture is no longer a mere metaphor: it represent a concrete possibility. (Luciano Berio)
Arturo Tamayo conducts the ensemble ’900 at the Swiss première of Luciano Berio’s Ofaním for 2 children's choir, 2 instrumental groups, female voice and live-electronics on 1 March at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano.
Also on the programme: O’King and Thema (Omaggio a Joyce).
Christian Baldini and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra will perform Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia on Saturday, 31 January, at the Music & Words Festival.
Find out more on the website of the Mondavi Center or watch a short feature on YouTube in which the conductor talks about Sinfonia and the Music & Words Festival:
On 17 January the Ballett Zürich’s triple bill Strings with works of William Forsythe, Christian Spuck and Edward Clug will premiere. Among the works performed: William Forsythe’s workwithinwork, which uses 26 of Luciano Berio’s 34 Duetti.
Watch an excerpt of workwithinwork, performed by the Compañía Nacional de Danza:
News from the Centro Studi Luciano Berio:
“The CSLB announces with great happiness that a street has been named after Luciano Berio in a new Milan development being built in what used to be the Fiera area, called City Life. Via Luciano Berio is in a pedestrian area in the heart of the new neighborhood, and it flows into a piazza named after Elsa Morante. An analogous street which will also flow into Piazza Morante will be dedicated to Italo Calvino. This musical and literary “crossing” was proposed by Filippo del Corno, Culture Minister of the City of Milan, and described to the press: “A writer and a composer who both had a special relationship with the city of Milan are remembered for their innovative view towards the future, and concern for the development of the city”; for the complete article click here.
Via Berio and Piazza Morante will be inaugurated on Saturday, November 8th at 11:30 am, with a program including remarks by city officials and Talia Pecker Berio; the participation of students and teachers from the Conservatory of Milan, who will perform a selection of Duets by Luciano Berio along the new street; and a reading by Carlo Cecchi of few pages by Elsa Morante in the piazza.”
Find out more on Berio on the website of the Centro Studi Luciano Berio.
Today, 24 October, would have been Luciano Berio’s 89th birthday.
As you can see on our performance calendar of Berio’s works, the composer’s music is highly valued and frequently performed, and we’d like to draw special attention to the Staatstheater Kassel’s upcoming production of Un re in ascolto, which is scheduled for next May.
View the Centro Studi Luciano Berio’s entry on the 24th of October and their captivating page Per Luciano.
Read an extract from Umberto Eco’s article on Luciano Berio published in „Nuove Prospettive” (edited by Angela Ida De Benedictis) in our Musikblätter 4.
Pianist Richard Uttley will present his latest recording Ghosts & Mirrors on Wednesday 15 October at 8pm at The Forge in Camden.
At the CD launch, Uttley will play a selection of the pieces from the disc and will be joined onstage by Nat Urazmetova, a London-based visual artist who created the artwork for the disc and will mix live visuals in response to the music.
Included on the CD are the Luciano Berio’s 6 Encores and the first recording of Alban Berg’s/Marvin Wolfthal’s Lulu Fantasy, a paraphrase of Alban Berg’s great opera Lulu in the spirit of Liszt’s virtuoso opera arrangements (it was also Richard Uttley who performed the UK première of the piece).
The pianist on working with Nat Urazmetova:
I wanted to work with Nat as the aesthetic of her work is the closest thing I could find to a visual representation of my feelings on the atmosphere and concerns of the works I chose to record for Ghosts & Mirrors. Themes explored by the music include hauntings, rebirth, symmetry and warping – all of which are expressed either directly or obliquely by Nat’s images.
Read the full text on his blog.
Rohan de Saram, former
cellist of the Arditti Quartet, will perform works by Bach, Berio, Wellesz, Rusconi, Rogl, and Berauer on 27 November at the Austrian
Cultural Forum London.
De Saram on Sequenza XIV:
I feel very honoured that Maestro Berio wrote this work for me. I feel also great sorrow that we did not have the opportunity to meet in August 2003, as planned, in order to finalise technical details. His last words to me were, “See you in August!"
Part of the inspiration for Sequenza XIV came from Luciano's interest in the Kandyan drum rhythms of Sri Lanka, Kandy being the ancient capital of Ceylon, the Sri Lanka of today. Several times after my performances of Il Ritorno degli Snovidenia, with Maestro Berio conducting, he wanted to know about the musical instruments of the country I came from, Sri Lanka, particularly the Kandyan drum which I have played myself since I was a boy. [...]
Find out more on the website of the Austrian Cultural Forum London. The event is free, but seating is limited.
Luciano Berio: Sequenza XIV
for violoncello | 13'
Egon Wellesz: Sonate
for violoncello
27.11.2013, Austrian Cultural Forum London; Rohan de Saram, vc
Today, 14 November, is the third chance to see the Stuttgart Ballet’s current
production FORT//SCHRITT//MACHER [Ground Breakers], featuring
three abstract ballets by three pioneering choreographers.
On the programme: workwithinwork
by William Forsythe (music: Luciano
Berio: Duetti
per due Violini), Marco Goecke’s on velvet, with music from Edward Elgar and Johannes
Maria Staud’s Segue, and the Frank Bridge Variations by Hans van Manen (music: Benjamin Britten:
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge).
Further performances will take place on 1, 7, 8, 10, 15 and 18 December.
An teaser for the performance is available on the homepage of the Stuttgart Ballet.
Staud on Segue:
“When you tell people you’re working at the moment on a piece for cello often you find yourself being asked: ‘Ah, so you mean a cello concerto?’ No, I always answer – not a cello concerto! A music for cello and orchestra.
Perhaps,
in the beginning, I coined this expression just as an aid for myself. Naturally
I might also have called the work Piece
for Cello and Orchestra – or quite simply Cello and
Orchestra, as for example Morton Feldman did. Or I could have
decided on retro-modern titles like Confrontation,
Constellation, …(con)cert(are), or even chosen the totally
post-modern Symphonic
Sketches for Violoncello and Orchestra.”
Read more and listen to an excerpt.
Several of Luciano Berio’s electronic music works will
be performed together with video works by Devis Venturelli on 7 and 8 November during
the Romaeuropa festival at the Opificio Telecom Italia. Among the pieces performed will be Chants parallèles, Visage, and Momenti.
Finally: Tom Service has posted a symphony guide to Luciano
Berio’s Sinfonia, “a flabbergastingly rich strata of writings-on and writings-over”.
The work for 8 voices and orchestra, which is dedicated to Leonard Bernstein,
was premièred on 10 October 1968 by Berio, the New York Philharmonic and the
Swingle Singers.
Read Service’s guide on The Guardian, you will most definitely not regret it.
Luciano Berio on Sinfonia:
The title of Sinfonia (composed in 1968 for the 125th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra) is not meant to suggest any analogy with the classical symphonic form. It is intended more etymologically: the simultaneous sound of various parts, here eight voices and instruments. Or it may be taken in a more general sense as the interplay of a variety of things, situations and meanings. Indeed, the musical development of Sinfonia is constantly and strongly conditioned by the search for balance, often an identity between voices and instruments; between the spoken or the sung word and the sound structure as a whole. This is why the perception and intelligibility of the text are never taken as read, but on the contrary are integrally related to the composition. Thus, the various degrees of intelligibility of the text along with the hearer’s experience of almost failing to understand, must be seen to be essential to the very nature of the musical process.
Erica Jeal of The Guardian reviews Friday night’s performance of Luciano
Berio’s Sinfonia
at the Royal Festival Hall. Marin Alsop conducted
the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and The Swingle Singers:
“Alsop recharged that glow here. Directing the orchestra plus the eight amplified members of the Swingle Singers, the vocal ensemble for whom Sinfonia was written, she was rock steady, absolutely in control. The piece sounded electrifying – often haunting, crazy at times, but never cacophonous. Its fulcrum is its third movement, a vast collage of speech, singing and many, many orchestral quotations: it is as if Berio is throwing everything he can think of against the wall to see what will stick.”
Read the full review on The Guardian.
Berio on Sinfonia:
“The title of Sinfonia (composed in 1968 for the 125th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra) is not meant to suggest any analogy with the classical symphonic form. It is intended more etymologically: the simultaneous sound of various parts, here eight voices and instruments. Or it may be taken in a more general sense as the interplay of a variety of things, situations and meanings. Indeed, the musical development of Sinfonia is constantly and strongly conditioned by the search for balance, often an identity between voices and instruments; between the spoken or the sung word and the sound structure as a whole. This is why the perception and intelligibility of the text are never taken as read, but on the contrary are integrally related to the composition. Thus, the various degrees of intelligibility of the text along with the hearer’s experience of almost failing to understand, must be seen to be essential to the very nature of the musical process.”