Berio Pezzi

Unlike many of his radical new music colleagues, Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) had a great affection for older music, especially that of the Italian Renaissance and Early Baroque eras. But his transcriptions had little to do with the orthodoxy of so-called ‘historically informed’ interpretation. In the belief that works of art can be removed from their original contexts, he used contemporary instrumental resources to discover new meaning and a new validity in the works of old masters.

Unlike many of his radical new music colleagues, Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) had a great affection for older music, especially that of the Italian Renaissance and Early Baroque eras. But his transcriptions had little to do with the orthodoxy of so-called ‘historically informed’ interpretation. In the belief that works of art can be removed from their original contexts, he used contemporary instrumental resources to discover new meaning and a new validity in the works of old masters.

Luciano Berio was one of the most important Italian composers of the second half of the twentieth century, a leader of the international avant-garde who has managed to write music that is communicative and pleasing to audiences. He received musical instruction from his father and grandfather, organists in Oneglia, and continued musical training through his school years. After World War II he went to Milan to study law but also became a composition pupil with Ghedini, a composer known for his interest in many styles. He passed that interest on to Berio, who started his career as a neo-Classicist.
While in school Berio met met a remarkable American singer, Cathy Berberian. They married and went to the U.S. on their ……..
From Allmusic

Studying Berio's works, one realises how it is essential to progressively abandon the instruments of the past dialectic and mostly those relationships "cause - effect" upon which any deduction approach is grounded. Each of his works is based on the concept of multipolarity, i.e. on a boundless and continuous proliferation of linguistic correlations".

Enzo Restagno: "Luciano Berio" Torino 1995

Violinist Michelle Makarski's versatility, technique, and intuitive grasp of multiple traditions place her in alignment with the most accomplished of late 20th and early 21st century violinists, including Paul Zukofsky, Gidon Kremer, and Irvine Arditti. Released in 2000, her album Elogio per Un'ombra is an extraordinary achievement which defines both her artistry and the expanded philosophy of musical presentation that has come to characterize Manfred Eicher's ECM label since the introduction of its New Series and the inclusion of diverse works dating from different centuries.

As with a handsome, persuasive architectural plan, this suite of pieces is far from haphazard in its design. The web of associations and connections which have led Michelle Makarski to bring them together is the key to the whole enterprise. Italy is, of course, the common ground, but not the Italy of Rossini and Bellini, nor even of Verdi and Puccini, but rather of Tartini, the true spiritual inheritor of the intellectual musical tradition of the Florentine Camerata. Dallapiccola, Petrassi and Berio are all 20th century avatars of this same tradition, while the Americans Carter and Rochberg, both of them having close personal ties to these three, spent crucial formative time in Italy, absorbing the purity and elegance of its art and culture. The final piece on the program, the anonymous 14th century Lamento di Tristano, is one of the earliest surviving pieces of Italian instrumental music, an unassuming yet highly moving forerunner of the whole corpus of italian music. It is - to return to the architectural analogy - a small, ancient garden now standing in the shade of the villa erected alongside it.

from the CD booklet