Luciano Berio was an avant-garde Italian composer who loomed very large over the “classical” music landscape of the second half of the twentieth century. A native of Oneglia (now Borgo d'Oneglia), Berio was originally educated by his father and grandfather both of who were organists. His formal training was achieved at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini where he studied piano. Berio was forced to abandon his piano studies due to a hand injury he sustained in World War II, and he instead concentrated his efforts toward composition.
In the early 1950s, Berio came to the United States and studied at Tanglewood. He later studied at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik at Darmstadt, where he cam into contact with such musical luminaries as Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and György Ligeti. He spent the rest of his life teaching and composing in the United States and abroad.
Among the many types of compositions in which Berio excelled, his solo outings, entitled Sequenzas, are perhaps his most famous. He began the composition of the Sequenzas in 1958 with Sequenza I for flute and ended with Sequenza XIV for violoncello in 2002, completed a year prior to the composer’s death at 77. Before the release of Naxos Classical’s Sequenzas I-XVI for Solo Instuments the most complete collection was the splendid 20/21 - Berio: Sequenzas / Ensemble InterContemporain (Deutsche Grammophon, 1057788, 1999).
Naxos Classical forges ahead in its attempt to document any and all art music with the release of Sequenzas I-XVI for Solo Instruments. This is the first complete set of the Sequenzas since Berio’s death and it is very fine. But in all of its fineness, the Sequenzas are a bit hard to describe in the same way that Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz or John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space are hard to describe. The Sequenzas are among the most “free” compositions of any genera captured on record.
A single listen to these pieces is not adequate. Each instrument brings its own personality and Berio treats them as such. Berio approached his subjects from many angles. For example, perhaps the most notable of the pieces is Sequenza III for Soprano Voice. Berio composed the piece in 1965 for his former wife Cathy Berberbian, whose instrument possessed great range and depth. Berio’s composition thoroughly tests the robustness of the soprano voice with acute range and octave shifts, fractured arpeggios and breathtaking trills. Listening to the soprano piece is a jarring, bracing experience requiring a Coleridgian “suspension of disbelief,” meaning that the listener needs to put aside his or her preconception of what music is thereby broadening the artistic horizon.
Article comments
1 - Connie Phillips
This article has been placed at the Advance.net websites, a site affiliated with about 12 newspapers.
One such site is here.