Description
SKU/Barcode: 8011570570109
At one point American composer William Bolcom suggested that a key contribution in the turnback from serial technique toward tonality was made by composer Luciano Berio in his Folk Songs (1964); this is merely one among many suggestions advanced as to exactly what touched off the return to tonality. Berio's opposition to the very idea of serialism to the exclusion of all other things is well documented in his 1968 essay "Meditations on a Twelve-Tone Horse." Although the Minimalists had a lot to do with the eventual comeback of tonality, the shift doesn't seem to have involved any single milestone, person, or work that one can pin down; while composer Paul Creston's prediction that serialism was "a terrible mistake that eventually will correct itself" may seem a bit too extreme, it was not altogether inaccurate. If any corrective is needed for the notion that serialism was a great Goliath that needed to be brought down by a specific David, then one will find it in Stradivarius' Bruno Maderna: Grande Aulodia. This is a compilation of three different concert recordings conducted by Maderna with the Rome RAI Orchestra Sinfonica and taken from broadcast. The program consists of Maderna's Darmstadt-y, but funny, Juilliard Serenade (1971) and his rougher and more aggressive aleatoric work Grande aulodia (1970), both bookending Maderna's completely conventional Music of Gaity (1969), featuring orchestral arrangements from the seventeenth-century Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Of these performances, Juilliard Serenade is the clear winner, it's nonchalant, chattering percussion, intermittent piano clusters, taped laughter, and other effects add up into something that works effectively both as a kind of interactive collage between the recording and the live element and as a lighthearted entertainment in the manner of a serenade. Grande aulodia, too, has its formal roots in the music of the eighteenth century, but is far more serious in intent; it is a partly fixed, partly freely notated work that functions as a kind of a sinfonia concertante for flute, oboe, and orchestra with the solo parts played here by its dedicatees, flutist Severino Gazzelloni and oboist Lothar Faber, for whom Maderna wrote many works. There is some pretty bracing, challenging, and confrontational stuff in Grande aulodia; the sometimes deliberately ugly tone quality of the solo oboe is part of what makes Grande aulodia appealing and those who don't particularly care for the standard sound of the oboe should give this a try. The oboe -- for once -- has some measure of muscle, as does much of the rest of this piece, though it has lyrical moments, too, mainly in the flute part. However, to characterize Grande aulodia as "easy" listening would be inaccurate to say the least. The most outwardly lyrical, and oddly least successful, of the three is the chamber orchestra suite Music of Gaity. Based on five familiar harpsichord pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, it's conventional in scoring and, in terms of treatment, not far off what Leopold Stokowski usually did with old music like this in transferring it to the modern orchestra. While it's not bad, Music of Gaity is totally out of sorts with its company on this disc, but it does survive as an interesting sidelight on Maderna himself; Maderna the conductor, who did not hesitate to create music that meshed with other pieces on his programs if needed. Indeed, Maderna's legend as a conductor in Italy in posterity reached such stature that for a time it threatened to obscure his work as a composer, despite being -- with Berio and Nono -- numbered among the summit of the Italian avant-garde. Although they are a tad quiet, these Italian radio recordings are of excellent sound quality and the originals must be very well preserved; none of them seem to have been issued before. While overall this might not be among the best Maderna collections of the many that Stradivarius has produced so far, it is a significa
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