Berio a Ronne

Admirers of Luciano Berio's Sequenzas have long wished for an affordable, high-quality collection of these masterpieces for solo instruments, considered by some to be the core works in the composer's oeuvre. Deutsche Grammophon released Ensemble InterContemporain's fabulous set in 1994, but its relatively high price and incompleteness make it a second choice when compared with the 2006 set on Naxos, which is both reasonably priced and complete, now that Sequenza XIV for cello appears on CD for the first time. Of course, bargaining over cost and completeness is one thing, but artistic quality is another important consideration: how does the Naxos edition fare in its performances and sound quality? While Ensemble InterContemporain's terrific compilation practically guarantees accuracy and authenticity – many of Berio's original musicians were involved in the project – the performances on this triple-disc set are quite comparable and wholly convincing in virtuosic skills, lustrous timbres, and splendid recording quality; only an adept student of these pieces could note any discrepancies, and those would be minor.

Collecting five CDs for about the price of three, this set of Boulez recordings is without parallel among the conductor's new-music releases. Imagine getting Boulez's celebrated single CD of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and Eindrücke and his equally impressive single CD of Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande and Variations for Orchestra, bundled with four pivotal Elliott Carter works, Sir Harrison Birtwistle's electrifying …AGM…, Gérard Grisey's Modulations, Iannis Xenakis's Jalons, Hugues Dufourt's Antiphysis, and Brian Ferneyhough's Funerailles, and you have an idea how far this set stretches.

"The main attraction on this disc is the Berio orchestral arrangement of the Clarinet Sonata op.120/1. Like Schoenberg, it’s a harmonically and melodically “straight” transcription, not a modern re-imagining of the work. Berio, no stranger to orchestrations and adaptations - Puccini’s Turandot, works by Schubert, Mahler, and Verdi - tackled this last major work of Brahms’ for reasons we don’t know. Iosif Raiskin speculates that the tinges of Mahler in late Brahms may have been a reason for the Mahler-loving Berio. Be that as it may, the result is a wonderfully graceful Brahms Clarinet Concerto.

Magdalena Kozena's fourth Pentatone album Folk Songs brings together folk-inspired song cycles from across the globe. Ranging from Berio's Folk Songs to sets by Bartok, Ravel and Montsalvatge, this collection provides a kaleidoscope of twentieth-century orchestral song composition. Kozena performs them together with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. Folk Songs is star mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena's fourth album as part of her exclusive collaboration with Pentatone, after having presented the baroque cantatas recital album Il giardino dei sospiri and the songs in chamber-musical setting project Soiree in 2019, as well as Nostalgia together with Yefim Bronfman in 2021.

Few twentieth-century creators have been as inventive as Berio in their relationship with popular and ancestral traditions – drawing material as he did from the hits by The Beatles and the soundscapes of urban streets and markets. Here Geoffroy Jourdain paints the portrait of an explorer with a passion for the human voice. Truculent and volcanic in Sequenza III (performed with panache by French mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot), lyrical and caressing in E si fussi pisci, solemn and spellbinding in Cries of London.

The Alban Berg Quartet excel in 18th-century repertory and the Franz Josef Haydn found here makes up an especially excellent example of this ensemble’s playing. The music is great, too: the two late Op. 77 Quartets quartets are what I believe are the finest examples he penned in this genre.