Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Luciano Berio's birth is part of my Master Project, “With Heart and Brain.”
Luciano Berio lived as a protagonist in the midst of the cultural upsurge of the 20th century: at the Milan Conservatory he studied with Ghedini, in the United States he came into close contact with avant-garde movements on the other side of the Atlantic, and in Germany he attended the Darmstadt courses, where he met Boulez, Ligeti and Stockhausen. He explored dodecaphony, electronic music, opera, chamber music and the large orchestra, leaving his mark on every creative expression. “Trying to define music is like trying to define poetry,” he said. “It is, in fact, a happily impossible task. Music is everything you listen to with the intention of listening to music.”
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• ORAZIO SCIORTINO (1984-)
Lied ohne ende / Song without end (2023)
"There are memories that we tend to remove and others that always accompany us like a barely perceptible, haunting and endless melody that we hear only when we are not afraid. The piece is built on a Schumannian fragment from which it takes its title (Lied obne Ende op. 124), an eight-note melodic line that repeats from beginning to end around which harmonies and resonances are built. There is no end just as there is no beginning."
• JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-∞)
Ballades, op. 10 n. 1, Andante (1854)
The conception of the solo piano works reveals certain elements that deeply characterize Brahms' entire output and that reframe his so-called "formalism," placing it in a much more complex expressive context. The “Four Ballades”, Op. 10, belong to his youthful works, having been composed in Düsseldorf in 1854, and form a unified cycle inspired by the Scottish folk ballad “Edward”, translated and popularized in German by Johann Gottfried von Herder. Brahms conceives the relationship between music and poetic text as one of interpretation: the subject being narrated is not merely to be accompanied or represented by the music, nor only emphasized in its emotional impact. For Brahms, music must rather interact with the poetic language and comment on it, unfolding within its own design what is left unsaid in the literary text. The first Ballade, in D minor, is divided into three sections. The first part refers to the dramatic dialogue between Edward and his mother; although each of his steps is associated by the composer with a specific set of verses, the music proceeds autonomously and dwells for a long time on the characterization of the northern environment and the legendary atmosphere of the entire scene. The second section comments on the murder committed by Edward, where Brahms adopts a rhythmic solution that later became very characteristic of his music (3 against 2), making more perceptible the distinction between the subject who participates in the action and the one who observes it. The final part contains the epilogue, Edward's curse and the mother's lament, an episode that does not appear in Herder’s version of the ballad and which once again shows Brahms' freedom in his treatment of the poetic text.
• LUCIANO BERIO (1925-2003)
WasserKlavier / Water Piano, Teneramente e lontano (1965)
Six Encores is a collection of six compositions written by Berio between 1965 and 1990. These pieces, characterized by an aphoristic nature, explore the timbral possibilities of the instrument in an intrinsic and symbolic relationship with the subject of each fragment. In Wasserklavier, through the use of harmonic material from Brahms’ Op. 117 No. 2 and a carefully crafted timbre, "water" becomes the symbol of the nostalgic flow of memory, externalizing itself in a musical phrase of touching melancholy.
Linea / Line (1973) for two pianos, vibraphone and marimba
Manège I / Entreè I / Ensamble I / Manège II / Ensamble II / Manège III / Ensamble III / Entrèe II / Coda I / Coda II / Ensemble IV / Notturno
Berio was born at Oneglia, Liguria, on 24 October 1925 into a family in which music was a long-standing tradition. Both his father Ernesto and his grandfather Adolfo were composers, and he took his first steps in music with them. From the early fifties Berio made a name for himself as an authoritative exponent of the new generation of the musical avantgarde becoming one of the most influent composers of the past century. After an invitation in 1962 by Darius Milhaud, Berio starts teaching at Mills College in Oakland California where he met and taught Steve Reich.
Reich was inspired and admired by Berio’s work and often remembered it while composing his own works. After Berio and his wife Talia came to a performance of Music for 18 musicians and then The Cave in 1994, Reich and his former professor became good friends.
In 1973, Luciano Berio composed Linea for two pianos, marimba and vibraphone. Written for Felix Blaska, his dance company, and his musicians, Berio pursues the recurring phases of concordance, displacement, independence, and realignment of a hypothetical – ultimately elusive– melodic line divided between two pianos, vibraphone, and marimba. The composer here addresses the problem of a monody that, historically, contains and unfolds more complex functions. As the composer himself describes it: "A Bach melody – a monody, a simple line – implies not only a structure of phrases and rhythm, but also a harmonic structure. In the Sonatas for violin, only polyphony is implied and perceived as such, even though the violinist plays a single line [...] Linea is precisely this – an exposition of the elements implicit in a melody, apparently simple, which is destroyed by its own implications. Sometimes, however, the melody reappears in a recognizable form, like an object rediscovered after a long absence and observed with a different, perhaps deeper, gaze: a gaze that now reveals the complexity of that object. At times, the four performers meet on the same line and play the same melody; at other times, they diverge and play music that seems different, yet still generated from the melody that remains ever-present.“
Exactly 40 years later, Steve Reich composed Quartet for two pianos and two vibraphones, exploring the rhythmical and melodic complex patterns transforming and developing them through the movements continuously.
• STEVE REICH (1936-)
Quartet, for two pianos and two vibraphones
I borrow the words of Arnold Schoenberg, from Style and Idea, to describe what has been my main focus over these two years: the Heart, dedicated to my roots, its traditions, and its music, to which I am deeply connected and which I have learned to love, and the Brain, to that musical language which has naturally, deeply shaped my artistic journey and which spiritually represents my sense of home.
On the one hand, I therefore chose pieces by a number of Italian composers in different styles and eras (Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Luciano Berio, Orazio Sciortino), as well as works with a strong connection between them (Linea, Luciano Berio - Quartet, Steve Reich).
On the other hand, a musical language that is a fundamental part of what has been my education, as well as a strong passion, Johannes Brahms and Leos Janacek.
