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5.0 out of 5 stars
stunning modern concertos, Jun 29 2003
Boulez and his Ensemble InterContemporain here perform 5 concertos by Berio (may he rest in peace!), and it is a stunning tour de force! The works, composed between 1967 and 1981, feature cello, viola, oboe, violin and piano respectively. I'm not familiar with the other soloists, but it is Pierre-Laurent Aimard, well-known for his recent recordings of Messiaen and Ligeti, that plays on the piano concerto. The recordings were made at IRCAM in April of 1989 under Berio's supervision, and the disc was first released in 1990. The cello concerto was commissioned as a feature for Mstislav Rostropovich, and the title, which translates as "Return of the Dreams," indicated for Berio a reconciliation between his idealistic and Rostropovich's decisively negative view of the Russian Revolution. The piece incorporates three fragments of Russian revolutionary songs, and is "a hommage to a dream betrayed," in Berio's words. None of the other works have such an interesting story behind them. "Chemins" means "paths," and the method of these pieces is to take a solo line and proliferate orchestral responses from it in layers. The "Corale" for violin uses this method along with the "Chemin" for viola and oboe -- Berio called it "Corale" because the responding strings were in the same voice as the solo instrument unlike the other two. "Ritorno" and "Points On a Curve" utilize another method, also involving a solo line and response, but generating "waves of harmonic undulations in such a way as to define a slowly changing reservoir of pitches." To the extent that these techniques are clear to me at all, it is thanks to the excellent liner notes of David Osmond Smith. Fortunately these works are beautiful regardless of whether their construction is understood. Berio combines a lyrical sensibility with atonality and the most complex and original of compositional techniques. If you have heard, for instance, last year's outstanding recording of "Voci" by Kim Kashkashian on ECM (see my 7/28/02 review), you are likely to enjoy these concerti.
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