From the outset, Sir Simon Rattle's conducting career has been marked by a spirit of innovation and renewal - and contemporary music in all it's facets continues to play a significant role in his work. So it was only natural that, upon taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, he should dedicate a concert to musica viva. The programme featured the world premiere of Vito �uraj's "Automatones" as well as Luciano Berio's "Coro". Sir Simon Rattle has conducted the latter piece several times before, but this performance marks the first recording under his baton. This is due to the unique demands that the composition places on recording technology: choir singers and orchestra musicians are positioned in pairs on the podium to overcome the visual and acoustic separation of choir and orchestra voices. This presented a particular challenge to the Bavarian Radio recording team, but they rose to it successfully, as can be heard on the new CD from BR-KLASSIK. Composed between 1975 and 1976, Luciano Berio's "Coro", for forty voices and orchestra, takes anonymous folk poems by the Sioux, the Navajo and the Zuni, as well as song texts from Polynesia, Peru, Croatia, Venice, Piedmont, Chile, and the Song of Solomon - all of them reflecting the deeply human urge for freedom - and combines them with the moving poetry of Pablo Neruda, whose death coincided with the bloody suppression of the Allende democracy in Chile by Augusto Pinochet in September 1973.

UN is the result of many hours of practice, concerts and a lot of work done, but above all it is the result of five people who, although time has passed and making five very different lives coincide with each other has become difficult, can't wait to meet up to play together, giving life to a project that connects the contemporary Italian repertoire to the American Jazz and Blues ones. Luciano Berio, through the blasts of Call, captures the attention and prepares the listener for the inexorability of the four movements of For Brass by Giuseppe Garbarino; an electric History of Mok by Alessio Manega involves and charges the audience with energy which Corrado Saglietti, with his Blues and Encore from the Any Time Brass Quintet collection, welcomes and transforms into dance, transporting the listener overseas. Who better than Duke Ellington and George Gershwin to squeeze the juice of so much passion? Summertime is just one of the themes that greet listeners with the same warmth felt by the musicians when recording them. Erika is still trying to understand if she is reading an 8 or a B on the score; Michele consolidates his career as Major with the patience that distinguishes him; Marina, extricating herself from the numerous instruments that she inexplicably plays at a level beyond human comprehension, is determined to divide Nicol� and Federico, engaged in their usual umpteenth and eternal squabble: immersed in their very well known calm and relaxed mood, the five members of the Canaja Brass Quintet have never been so proud to wish you happy listening.

The recording project "Labyrinthoi" (Labyrinths) is the result of the collaboration between saxophonist Isacco Buccoliero and composer Andrea Siano. Driven by a strong desire to explore the timbral and technical possibilities of the saxophone, the two Apulian artists work on arrangements and compositions of original pieces. Their aim is to expand the saxophone repertoire by drawing from tradition while simultaneously creating new musical forms and styles. The entire project is inspired by the imagery evoked by the labyrinth: a timeless archetype that speaks to humanity and it's inner condition within the cosmos. It reflects the perpetual search for a path that is often winding and whose completion presents itself as a daunting challenge, despite the ease with which one may have entered it. The five tracks collected here appear as five labyrinths from which, as in Spacecraft, maybe it is possible to get out only by moving upwards, in other words by overcoming all centrifugal, centripetal and gravitational forces.

Classical Music

Commissioned by Marc Collet and Ensemble21, Onze Folksongs d'ici et d'ailleurs by Jean-Marie Rens is a complete rearrangement of his Sept chansons traditionnelles flamandes, francaises et wallonnes composed over twenty years ago. This new version calls for a larger instrumental ensemble, since it was rewritten for the lineup of Luciano Berio's famous Folk Songs, to which it offers an original and unprecedented mirror. The challenge here was to preserve the specific character of these Sept chansons while carrying out a massive task of orchestration-arrangement as well as composition. � Luciano Berio is arguably the most prominent figure in contemporary Italian music. He composed the cycle of Folk Songs in 1964 for his wife, the American soprano Cathy Berberian. A remarkable fusion of popular and classical music, they represent a kind of anthology made up of eleven folk songs of various origins that the composer had found on old records, in printed collections or heard directly from friends. � Albane Carrere and the Ensemble21 conducted by Marc Collet approach these two collections with infinite tenderness and a subtle art of evocation. Albane Carrere's mezzo voice weaves the link and travels imperceptibly between these two worlds.

Circles is one of Berio's most captivating, intriguing and fascinating works, a piece based on the poetry of e. e. cummings, wonderfully interpreted by the "Callas" of New Music, Cathy Berberian. The "Sequenzas" are all virtuoso solo numbers, exploring the range and agility of each performer, all the way from flutter-tonguing for the flute to slides and glissandi for the trombone. Cathy Berberian: voice / Francis Pierre: harp / Jean Pierre Drouet: percussion / Jean Claude Casadesus: percussion / Aur�le Nicolet: flute / Vinko Globokar: trombone.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Ondine continues its exciting releases focusing on 20th century masterpieces together with conductor Hannu Lintu and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. This album is dedicated to orchestral works by the pioneer of Italian modernism, Luciano Berio (1925-2003).

A highlight of this disc is Berio's iconic 5-movement Sinfonia, undoubtedly his most well-known work, written for the New York Philharmonic and dedicated to Leonard Bernstein. It has become one of the key works and principal musical manifestations of the 1960s bringing together collage technique and modernism.

The recording begins with Berio's orchestral adaptation of Luigi Boccherini's popular Ritirata Notturna di Madrid. This disc also includes Calmo for mezzo-soprano and 22 instruments written by Berio after the death of a fellow composer and a friend Bruno Maderna. The work is sung here by mezzo-soprano Virpi Räisänen, a singer acclaimed for her performances of 20th century music.

Classical Music

BERIO: CORO