Andrea Lucchesini - Luciano Berio: Piano Music
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Andrea LucchesiniPerformer: Andrea Lucchesini
Composer: Luciano Berio
Conductor: n/a
Performer: Valentina Pagni Lucchesini
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 2007-05-29
Music Label: Avie
Free Music Notes for Luciano Berio: Piano Music
Free Music Review: Rewarding Modern Piano Music
Hit: 5 Stars
Somewhere between Messiaen and Stockhausen was my first reaction on listening to Berio's piano sonata. I thought the endless B flats that chime through the piece were going to drive me nuts, but halfway through the 20-minute piece there is a spectacular explosion of activity that is thrilling. Throughout, the ear is drawn into the extraordinary soundworld, even when the music is, on first acquaintance, rather dry. Zillions of fast repeated notes give several passages a feel of genuine motion and purpose - and the harmony in these exhilarating toccatas as well as the central explosion of chords (a veritable onslaught of light and dark hurled across the canvas) is fascinatingly ambiguous. I feared the music (my first reacquaintance with Berio for half a lifetime) might lack humanity, but I think it will reward repeated listening and will feel composed by a person rather than a system.
On a second hearing of this late work (written 2000-01, two years before the composer's death) I had no trouble with the repeated B flats (which inevitably recall Le gibet from Ravel's Gaspard). When they are superseded by very rapid repeated notes, you wonder (as we are at the piano) if the ghost of Prokofiev has walked across the stage, but to my ears these nightmarish scurryings have stepped out of the pages of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra, where they dash about the string section. Then (back to the Berio) that eruption of block chords like a musical equivalent of Pollock, then toccata-like passages that propel the action forward to fast chords reminiscent of Messiaen. These ideas alternate with periods of stillness before the reappearance of the tolling B flat. Many chords are almost consonant, many threads of notes almost melodies (though, make no mistake, like all Berio, this is very modern-sounding music!).
Verdict: A deeply rewarding and very strong piece of abstract music (no narrative element, unlike the piano sequenza, also on this disc). Fully worthy of the title Sonata. And the rest of the disc - all marvellously played and beautifully recorded - is equally enjoyable. The notes, including a reminiscence by the pianist of the composer, round off a must for anyone interested in modern piano music.
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