SACDs - Berio

Berio had an abiding fascination with reconciling the past and the present, which can be seen in his orchestral realisations of works by Mahler and Brahms, and most notably, in Rendering (1990), his typically creative completion of unfinished symphonic sketches by Schubert.

In Rendering, Berio – in his own words – sets himself the target of ‘following those modern restoration criteria that aim at reviving the old colours without, however, trying to disguise the damage that time has caused, often leaving inevitable empty patches in the composition’. In the ‘restoration’, Schubert’s sketches have been beautifully orchestrated in period style, and the ‘empty patches’ have been filled with music composed by Berio himself, in his own voice – thereby successfully combining the musical worlds of the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries into one convincing whole.

The Clarinet Sonata by Brahms embodies the composer’s taut and concentrated compositional style. In transcribing the work, Berio felt that, when experienced in the less intimate surroundings of today’s concert halls, the extreme compression of Brahms’s late chamber music style was in need of some additional support, and his version, recorded here, includes a fourteen-bar orchestral introduction to the first movement, leading into Brahms’s own, much shorter opening phrase, as well as five additional bars at the beginning of the second movement.

Berio completed his orchestration of six early songs by Gustav Mahler in 1987, and conducted the first performance with the Toscanini Orchestra on 7 December that year, with Thomas Hampson the baritone soloist. The six songs in this orchestrated set are ‘Hans und Grete’, ‘Phantasie’, ‘Scheiden und Meiden’, ‘Erinnerung’, ‘Frühlingsmorgen’, and ‘Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald’.

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Edward Gardner, with Roderick Williams the baritone soloist in the songs by Mahler and Michael Collins the soloist in Brahms’s Clarinet Sonata.

Paul Hillier leads Theatre of Voices in a fascinating programme centred on Luciano Berio: "Although not all these composers actually knew each other, I think of them as a group of mutual friends with shared interests and predilections. If there is a link between them it is perhaps the influence of John Cage, though it could almost equally have been the personality of Cathy Berberian. I’ve had the privilege of meeting them all except Berio. The largest work is Berio’s A-Ronne, which is for me an iconic example of the representative madrigal in modern dress. Mostly the pieces appear to tell a story – or stories – but avoid getting to the point. Two of them advance in straight lines by following the alphabet (A- Ronne, Stripsody), while others go round in circles, around and around." Paul Hillier

ON THE ROAD - looking for EXTREMES: Jack Kerouac's book On the Road saw the light of day in 1957. It was to become the cult book of the beat generation. To be forever-on-the-road was a new attitude to life, a present-day interpretation of the bohemian type, and it came to inspire generations of pop musicians. For the Arts, borders have always been irrelevant. Bach and Mozart sought inspiration in the music of all the countries around them. Bartók travelled endlessly and as far as Africa. The works on the present CD were written by composers from nine European countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Scotland, England and Italy. Nothing less than a journey through the trumpet repertoire of Europe. Wim Van Hasselt selected the works on the grounds of quality and diversity.

Born in Belgium, his passion for the trumpet took him quickly to Louvain, Brussels and - new to him - the city of Karlsruhe, where he studied with Reinhold Friedrich, in the words of Van Hasselt "an icon in the trumpet world and a source of inspiration for this CD". Like so many music students, he went 'on the road' to find a good teacher. In Karlsruhe he got to know the Japanese pianist Eriko Takezawa, who accompanied him as répétiteur for his entrance exam at the Hochschule and has often played with him since. Then Van Hasselt's dream to play in the best possible orchestra took him to Berlin and Amsterdam. And this CD was yet another dream. "Not only to stretch my own boundaries, but particularly because I really want people to hear this music. I have looked for the extremes of trumpet repertoire and have compiled a varied programme with pieces in all sorts of colours and styles, ranging from classical through belle époque to contemporary."

Unlike the piano, the king of instruments, only a small percentage of works has been written for solo violin. As everyone knows, a piano recital is a recital for solo piano. A violin recital, however, is usually a duet for violin and piano. Since the violin is mainly a singlemelody- instrument, it is always a special challenge for the violinist to study the solo works, simply because most of them comprise both the melodic line and the accompaniment normally given to the piano.....

Although it was a tradition in classical music for centuries that performer and composer were one and the same person, this custom sadly faded in the twentieth century. But we are fortunate in having some of the greatest masters of the violin, including Kreisler, Heifetz and Milstein, who composed or arranged many pieces for their instrument.

Although Kreisler composed few solo pieces except his cadenzas for a number of violin concertos, his Recitative and Scherzo-Caprice is surely one of the most popular pieces among all those famous Viennese desserts. And the Paganiniana by Milstein, so cleverly based on variations by Paganini, forms a violin master's tribute to the all-time iconic violinist.

On this recording I have also included two modern pieces for solo violin. These works by Berio and Schnittke are no conventional 'easy-listening'. But like all great modern art, they give us a new vision, allowing us to create new sound imagery from the violin.

Ning Feng