Luciano Berio: Laborintus 2
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Music CD Cover
Composer: Luciano BerioConductor: Luciano Berio
Performer: Ensemble Musique Vivante
Performer: Christiane Legrand
Performer: Janette Baucomont
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import, Original recording reissued
CD Release Date: 2000-11-14
Music Label: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
Soundtracks:
- Part 1
- Part 2
Free Music Notes for Luciano Berio: Laborintus 2
Free Music Review: Occasionally entertaing, but much more dated than his other works
Hit: 3 Stars
Luciano Berio, who ultimately took a place alongside Schnittke and Ligeti as a titan of 20th-century postmodernism, was just as inspired by the operatic tradition of his native Italy and Dante as he was by the innovations of musical modernism and electronic experimentation. LABORINTUS 2 for narrator, two sopranos, contralto, and chamber ensemble, written in 1965, is one of his earlier efforts linking present and past. Here we are fortunate to have the composer himself conducting the work, with poet Edoardo Sanguineti as narrator, three French singers, and the Ensemble Musique Vivante.
The work, running 33 minutes in length, is split into two parts. The first opens with random vocalizations from the singers, while the narrator quotes from Dante, Eliot, Pound, and the Bible, and Sanguineti himself. The ensemble is entirely out of sync with the singers, and the narrator is oblivious to it all, resulting in a chaotic but strangely beautiful combination vaguely like Ligeti's "Aventures" or, more closely, the last movement of Berio's "Sinfonia". One comes to understand the title very well, one is trapped in a maze of musical styles and eras and there's no reconciliation in sight. The second movement, the shorter of the two by a few minutes, is even more incongruent, opening with jazz and seguing into bleep-bloops electronic sounds about which Berio had great curiosity in those days.
Many have seen "Laborintus 2" as prototypical of Berio's 1968 work "Sinfonia" for jazz singers and orchestra, which also blends quotations from various composers and alludes to all manner of musical eras. However, I'm sorry to say that "Laborintus 2" is quite dated. "Sinfonia" still retains much of its power, especially in the recent recording on DG with the Goteborgs Symfoniker led by Peter Eotvos. At its lowest points, "Laborintus 2" seems like that most stale of 1960s musical events, the "happening". It's fun to take this down from the shelf once in a while, but listening to is an experience more comic than awe-inspiring.
Not only is the music not Berio's best, but one gets only thirty minutes of music, which doesn't make this disc much of a bargin in spite of its lower pricing. If you are looking for an introduction to this generally fascinating composer, get the DG recording of "Sinfonia" or the mid-price Sony disc collecting five of his concertos.
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