Claudio Abbado

Editorial Reviews
Album Details
Luigi Nono was One of the Most Original and Influential Composers to Emerge from Post War Italy. Having Always Guided by a Keen Awareness of Social Unity (He Joined Italy's Communist Party in 1952) Nono's Works Often Take the Form of Highly Empowering Expressive Public Spectacles. Here Among Others, Two of the Composers More Famous Longstanding Champions of his Work Mauricio Pollini and Claudio Abbado Perform Three of the Composers Most Evocative Works- the 'sofferte Onde Serene' and 'contrappunto Dialettico Alla Mente' Written Specifically for Them. If You Enjoy the Efforts of Stockhausen and Ligeti, Nono Will Certainly Be of Interest as Well.

Luigi Nono: Como una ola de fuerza y luz, for Soprano, Piano, Orchestra & Magnetic Tape (1971-72) / ...sofferte onde serene... For Piano & Magnetic Tape (1976) / Contrapunto dialettico alla mente, for Magnetic Tape (1968) - Maurizio Pollini / Claudio Abbado, Music, Luigi Nono (Composer), Maurizio Pollini (Piano), Slavka Taskova (Soprano), Claudio Abbado (Conductor), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rome RAI Chamber Choir, Nino Antonellini (Director), Classical, Classical Music

Luigi Nono: Como una ola de fuerza y luz, for Soprano, Piano, Orchestra & Magnetic Tape (1971-72) / ...sofferte onde serene... For Piano & Magnetic Tape (1976) / Contrapunto dialettico alla mente, for Magnetic Tape (1968) - Maurizio Pollini / Claudio Abbado
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Luigi Nono, Avant-Garde Superstar!

Massive Orchestral Violence

Revolutionary music.

get it while you can

Nono masterpiece plus two, with Pollini and Abbado

Luigi Nono: Como una ola de fuerza y luz, for Soprano, Piano, Orchestra & Magnetic Tape (1971-72) / ...sofferte onde serene... For Piano & Magnetic Tape (1976) / Contrapunto dialettico alla mente, for Magnetic Tape (1968) - Maurizio Pollini / Claudio Abbado
Luigi Nono (Composer) , Maurizio Pollini (Piano) , Slavka Taskova (Soprano) , Claudio Abbado (Conductor) , Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra , Rome RAI Chamber Choir , and Nino Antonellini (Director)
Manufacturer: Deutsche Gram. Ger.
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000E3Z2
Release Date: 1988-07-25

Tracks:

Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: Beginning
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: I. Interno Dolce
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: II. Duro Deciso
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: Piano Entry
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: III. Dolcissimo Sereno
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: Orch Entry
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz: Orch And Pno Entry
.....Sofferte Onde Serene... - Maurizio Pollini
Contrappunto Dialettico Alla Mente - Liliana Poli/Cadigia Bove/Marisa Mazzoni/Elena Vicini/Umberto Troni...

Album Details

Luigi Nono was One of the Most Original and Influential Composers to Emerge from Post War Italy. Having Always Guided by a Keen Awareness of Social Unity (He Joined Italy's Communist Party in 1952) Nono's Works Often Take the Form of Highly Empowering Expressive Public Spectacles. Here Among Others, Two of the Composers More Famous Longstanding Champions of his Work Mauricio Pollini and Claudio Abbado Perform Three of the Composers Most Evocative Works- the 'sofferte Onde Serene' and 'contrappunto Dialettico Alla Mente' Written Specifically for Them. If You Enjoy the Efforts of Stockhausen and Ligeti, Nono Will Certainly Be of Interest as Well.

Customer Reviews:

Luigi Nono, Avant-Garde Superstar!.......2006-09-09

You know what, in all honesty I don't really care about Luigi Nono's politics whatsoever. Does anyone here have a deep insight into his political ideas other than mentioning he was some sort of radical Marxist? If you have read extensively about Nono and are fascinated by how his socio-political ideas come into bloom via his unique music, well don't be offended by my comments because like I said earlier, his politics don't mean much to me. I am much more fascinated by his creation of a singular sound world and at this he is one of the original voices of the past century, along with other modernist notables, anyone from Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and the more avant-garde frame of modernism like Boulez, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Ligeti, etc. Wow, I was just dropping names like some jerk at an avant-garde music dinner party. Are there such parties? Ha!

Anyway, back to Luigi Nono, I really had some good listening fun with this CD. The main work is "Como una ola de fuerza y luz" (composed 1971-72), which means, "Like a wave of light and strength" in English. An intriguing title and very enigmatic music. It is half an hour long and mixes moments of dreamy quiet with intense, massive orchestral explosions. Just to think how much the idiom of Nono and his avant-garde cohorts was blatantly ripped off by Hollywood film composers for decades up to the present day. Mostly of course in fashion for sci-fi and horror films. Gotta love those Hollywood hacks, like Elliot Goldenthal for one example.

I want to mention that Maurizio Pollini plays the piano parts in this work and there is a soprano part amidst the orchestral violence and electronic studio tinkering. Claudio Abbado conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Pollini, that magnificient Italian pianist, whose technique is a wonder to behold on his other recordings is much misused on this CD. The second work, "...soffete onde serene..." (composed 1976), features him prominently but it's just a lot of piano banging, not much work for a prime, superstar virtuoso.

The final selection on this record is "Contrappunto dialettico alla mente" (a tape composition from 1968), this is the most overtly political selection you will find on this whole disc. You get complete translations in the booklet and you can find out for yourself the anger that Luigi Nono wanted to convey about the various political upheavals taking place during the late 1960's. There is even one attack against American imperialism and the war in Vietnam. Yikes! To be honest, this final work which runs 19 minutes, 51 seconds is quite unintentionally funny. It electronically varies different human voices together in crazy ramblings. This sound experiment can actually give you a good, hearty laugh at the avant-garde hijinks which were so prevelant during this era in musical and political history. I found it very entertaining and stimulating as an aural, environmental landscape. Every person I played it to have responded with laughter and mocking fun. I certainly don't imagine this was Nono's intention or did the man have a wicked sense of humor to go along with his high-minded intellectualism? Nonetheless, nowadays you can hear similar crazy electronic experimentalism on various public radio outfits late at night.

This CD is a very entertaining venture into the world of the European avant-garde. For such a cheap price and with very fine sound, certainly consider exploring this alien terrain, I'm sure it's unlike most of the music you listen to unless you're already a die-hard modernist convert.

Massive Orchestral Violence.......2003-11-06

Having posessed this disc for quite a few years I was surprised to see it again here. This is not music for the faint of heart. Ultimately this music is about destruction - maybe the lyrics are not, but the music itself is. Nono went on to other musical ideas later on in his career, but this truly is Nono at his most ruthless on the ear. This music demands a very high end stereo system and either no neighbors or deaf neighbors. The last movement of Como una ola... is pretty uncompromising. I find it the apex of anger, hatred and violence in music that I have heard so far out of the Nono catalog. The performances on this disc are first rate. No other recording (yes, there are others) approaches the intensity of this. Buy this if you are extremely agitated yourself or want to be.

Revolutionary music........2003-08-31

Luigi Nono (1924-1990) was one of the 20th century's most radical composers. Nono, who fought against the Fascists in the Italian Resistance during World War II, studied both music and law in the post-war years before joining the Italian Communist Party in 1952. During the mid- to late-1950s, Nono taught at Darmstadt, the center of European serialism, and with Boulez and Stockhausen was the foremost exponent of that music on the continent. Nono married Schoenberg's daughter, Nuria, in 1955, and severed his ties with Darmstadt in 1959, after delivering a lecture entitled "The Presence of History in the Music of Today." This lecture was the composer's most notable public statement concerning his own radical Marxist politics, and the 1960s and 1970s saw Nono taking an increasingly active role the affairs of the Communist Party, for which he served on the Central Committee.

Like Pollini, Abbado, and Berio, Nono's worldview was permanently shaped by the subjection of Italy to the Fascism of Mussolini. All turned to Marxism in response, and Nono's deeply held political beliefs are on display throughout this magnificent collection of works from the late 1960s and early '70s. Unlike Stockhausen and Boulez, Nono saw in serialism a revolutionary musical grammar with implications extending beyond the realm of the purely musical into the realm of the political. Nono's adoption of serialism was a response to the domination of capitalism, imperialism, and the continued subjugation of the many by the few. Nono's music, which is initially forbidding and inaccessible, can be understood as the embodiment of Marx's concept of the unity of theory and practice. This is a revolutionary music, through which the composer expresses his hope for a world of true freedom rather than slavery, alienation, and mass murder.

"Como una ola de fuerza y luz" is dedicated to the memory of Lusiano Cruz, whose name is repeated in the work by the soprano vocalist (in this case, Slavka Taskova). Cruz, a Chilean revolutionary, died in 1971, two years before the Kissinger-planned coup which led to the death of Marxist president Salvador Allende and the installation of the Fascist Augusto Pinochet, who murdered Chileans en masse for the next 17 years. Nono's text implores the dead Cruz to "keep on glowing, young as the revolution in every one of your peoples' struggles." This powerful piece features thundering piano work from Nono's fellow Marxist, Maurizio Pollini, whose virtuosity is offset by the composer's jarring tape manipulations. A beautifully conceived and executed work.

Pollini again contributes his piano skills to 1976's "... sofferte onde serene. . . ." Moments of lyricism are contrasted against Nono's magnetic tape arrangements, and the result is a stunning mixture of opacity and accessibility. A challenging, but ultimately satisfying work.

"Contrappunto dialettico alla mente" (1968) again sets overtly political texts in Nono's pursuit of a total political engagement, "ideological and technical." Using words from Malcolm X and an anti-Vietnam War pamphlet, Nono crafts a work that is a reflection of the warped society it criticizes: terrifying, overwhelming, remorseless. The shrieking voices and intimations of violence echo the horrific destruction of the late-1960s. This is one of Nono's most important and ideologically characteristic works.

Obviously, this is not music for everyone, but for the openminded and discerning listener, this disc contains treasures. Nono's work is among the most vital and dynamic to emerge from the 20th century avant-garde, and in our modern world of Fascism, war, and imperialism, the political message which lies behind Nono's music has never been more relavent.

get it while you can.......2003-08-30

I agree 100% with Autonomeus, this is a "must own"; I was excited to see they reissued it. The last piece "Contrapunto dialettico alla mente" is a classic from the tape-manipulation genre, mixing sounds of leftist 60s speeches with interesting effects. I don't think it's available anywhere else, so worth getting for this masterpiece alone. The sung line (in Italian) "Whitey wants you, n*gg**, to go to Vietnam and die" gives me shivers every time, even after hearing this piece many times. The second piece "...sofferte onde serene..." is a subtle complex piece admired by pianists but difficult to get a hook into for listeners. This is a great performance of it though. In my opinion this version of "Como una ola de fuerza y luz" isn't as good as the other recorded rendition--which is not what you'd expect considering it's Abaddo (who's excellent with Nono) and Pollini (who's Pollini)! Part of it is the singing; the passion of the singer on the other version is superior, maybe because she speaks Italian. Also, though Pollini's piano is noticably better in this rendition, something is missing from his overall performance. Maybe Nono is too--dare I say--raw for Pollini? Still, this performance is different enough from others that it is worth owning. Overall, terrific CD.

Nono masterpiece plus two, with Pollini and Abbado.......2003-06-16

This is the original recording of one of Nono's masterpieces, with Maurizio Pollini on piano and Claudio Abbado conducting. "Como una ola de fuerza y luz" ("Like a Wave of Strength and Light") was written in 1971-2 commemmorating the death of a friend of Nono's, Luciano Cruz, a Chilean leftist opponent of Pinochet. A 30-minute piece, it features soprano voice, piano, orchestra, and electronics. It is incredible in every aspect, and though challenging, it is one of Nono's more accessible works, the perfect introduction to the work of one of the late 20th century's greatest composers. "...sofferte onde serene..." ("serene waves suffered"), for piano and magnetic tape, is a fantastic 14-minute piece featuring Pollini in the Schoenberg/Webern tradition. Finally, "Contrappunto dialettico alla mente" is a startling radical 20-minute piece for vocals and electronics, with lyrics from Malcolm X and an anti-Vietnam war flier among other sources. The booklet contains the complete text, thankfully, since the vocals are all in Italian.

This album was originally issued in 1990, but it has not been available recently in the U.S. .... Grab it quick before it disappears again! DG has now packaged these recordings of "Como una ola..." and "sofferte" under Pollini's name, along with a third piano piece not by Nono (a single-disc taken from the massive Pollini Edition). This disc, from DG's excellent mid-line "20th Century Classics" series, is clearly preferable if you are interested in Nono and not just Pollini.

Luigi Nono: Como una ola; Epitaffio No. 1; Epitaffio No. 3
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Reconsidering Nono

like a wave of strength and light!

Disc shows transition between Nono's early and late styles.

Great music by a throughly neglected composer

Luigi Nono: Como una ola; Epitaffio No. 1; Epitaffio No. 3

Manufacturer: Berlin Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Luigi Nono: Complete Works for Solo Tape

ASIN: B0000035Q8
Release Date: 1994-09-20

Tracks:

Like A Wave Of Strength And Light - Ursula Reinhardt-Kiss/Guisoppe La Licata
Epitaffio No.1 'Spain In The Heart': I. Evening
Epitaffio No.1 'Spain In The Heart': II. War
Epitaffio No.1 'Spain In The Heart': III. Qasida Of The Rose
Epitaffio No.3 'Memento': Ballad Of The Spanish Civil Guard

Customer Reviews:

Reconsidering Nono.......2002-07-30

I have of course known of Luigi Nono for most of my life. His music was discussed in every book on twentieth century music to be written since the 60's. And yet I'm ashamed to say that I had never heard anything by Nono until I bought this CD recently. I didn't know what I'd been missing. Nono is far from a dessicated total serialist. Rather his music is passionate and revolutionary. And perhaps even a bit spiritual...though probably it's a Marxist spirituality.

como una ola de fuerza y luz is the monumental work on this disc. Scored for orchestra, tape and soprano soloist, the work is a sonic tour de force. It was written to morn the death of Luciano Cruz, a Chilean revolutionary whom Nono had befriended. The sonic world of the piece is based on recurrent low clusters in the orchestra, and a musique concrete tape based on distorted piano and human voices. The work is tragic and haunting.

The other works on this CD are from the 1950's, when Nono was first making his reputation. They are settings of Neruda and Lorca and meant as an epitaph to Lorca, murdered by Franco's followers during the Spainish Civil War. The works are uncompromising, and yet there is a profound lyricism in the music. This becomes most evident at the end of the Third Epitaffio as the music becomes a straightforward tonal version of a Spanish Civil War anthemn. The effect is very moving.

Performances are exemplary on this CD. Ursula Reinhardt-Kiss sings the monumentally difficult lines of como with real precision. And Roswitha Trexler and Werner Haseleu do a wonderful job on the equally difficult lines of the Epitaffio.

This CD has whetted my appetite for more music of this wonderful composer. He is vastly underrated.

like a wave of strength and light!.......2001-07-12

"como una ola de fuerza y luz" was written in 1971/1972 to commemorate the Chilean revolutionary, Luciano Cruz, of the MIR (Revolutionary Leftist Movement). This 30-minute piece, recorded in 1976 in Leipzig, is for soprano, piano and orchestra, accompanied by a tape recording of transformed piano sounds and human voices. The electronics are therefore simple, but powerfully effective, used at the end to evoke the continuing presence of the revolutionary spirit, and the utopian prospect. As noted, "como una ola" marked a transition toward Nono's more contemplative late (1980s) style. The two shorter works included here (written in 1952/3, recorded in 1977) are less innovative musically, but form a thematic whole, as they commemorate the (losing) democratic forces of the Spanish Civil War (set to verse from Garcia-Lorca and Neruda). From the dictators Franco and Pinochet, to such current anti-democratic forces as the World Trade Organization, the struggle continues...

Disc shows transition between Nono's early and late styles........1998-12-22

Memento (Epitafio No.3) is a good example of Nono's early style, based on Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra, with shouting chorus and a political text. Como una etc., composed in 1972, is rooted in this kind of music but also shows the transition into late Nono, full of erie, static sound, a sort of white on white effect. Dedicated to Luciano Cruz, a Chilean revolutionary and martyr, the work's title means "Like a wave of strength and light." Nono's musical interpretation of strength here consists in rumbling percussion and a piano smoldering away in its lower registers, while light becomes the electronically produced "space music" which the more violent music periodically gives way to, as if to a vision of another, more spiritual realm. Como una ola de fuerza y luz is certainly one of Nono's most powerful works, and may be one of the masterpieces of the century.

Great music by a throughly neglected composer.......1998-12-21

Frank Zappa once said that one of his band members wanted to turn your teen aged ears around. He must have had music like this in mind. Luigi Nono's music thoroughly engages the ear and mind in ways that the rock modernist could only hope for. His setting of texts by Lorca and Neruda are stunning and the performances on this disc are a revelation. Even in the short and simple third movement of the Epitafio #1 the poem and its setting create an entire world that would take Borges fifteen pages to suggest.

Maurizio Pollini Edition - Nono: Como una ola de fuerza y luz; Manzoni: Masse

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powerful collaborative synergies here

Maurizio Pollini Edition - Nono: Como una ola de fuerza y luz; Manzoni: Masse

Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00005RRY0
Release Date: 2003-01-14

Customer Reviews:

powerful collaborative synergies here.......2005-01-30

Manzoni is an interesting composer,he has written much for the theatre, having a number of operas, as his Danton & Robespierre. So his musical language has this kind of chordal power building great walls of timbre. He is far more direct with classical shapes of durational frames. He never went off and began again renewed the paradigm of timbre as Luigi Nono had done unpretenciously the last ten years of his life. But here this hommage to another innovator Edgar Varese is a fitting proper tribute, incredibly powerful in gesture.

Pollini had worked with Nono also Claudio Abbado in the Seventies when his career as piano soloist had not quite takened off yet. the "serene waves endured" here is a beautiful piece where Pollini had prerecorded materials for playback on the tape (nastro magneticco) that is altered made more thuddy even tympani-like timbres emerge from the speakers. The speakers are place to the right and left of the piano and uder it as well. It was original quadraphonic but Nono thought this perhaps to impersonal and collective too large for a piece of music that gestures toward an introspection, a private world, perhaps from the island in Venice where Nono had lived. If you have ever lived in Venice and have heard the waters gentle flapping against the bricks or the peel of bells, you quite correctly see where the gestural focus of this work recides. The live piano part creates a timeless events, simple chords and high register "tinckly" like timbres. Something that the late Morton Feldman has referred to as a sterotypical clique of the avant-garde. Nono however makes more of it than that,having worked out some 186 tone scale between the prerecorded materials and the piano. So it is like there was 186 timbres to work with.

The "Como una ola forza" is more an extroverted piece dedicated to a Chilean revolutionary murdered, here we find typical Nono strident walls of timbre unresolved tension bound,throwing themselves into the world of the atrocities of the globe. The vocalist comes to shout and sing high register soprano declamations. It is beginning to sound dated now also when you hear the vocal music of Luciano Berio, you have this whispering like declamations that was an integral part of the avant-garde in the Fifties and Sixties. Berio believed it as well which is why he got outside of himself with the more "hip" gestures of his "Sinfonia" which also sounds quite dated now. The Nono here keeps a level of abstraction at work, and this work is rather git-wrenching and difficult to listen to, all the more engaging. Works like these seem to contravene the current scene of new music that is obsessed with popular gestures and being loved by their public, even political works are those of ones of jazzy engaging gestures that draw one in in a :groove" Nono had known no such language. He did remain committed to the paradigm of the post-war avant-garde that of Post-Webern and always had great charts and creative agendas for all his works, as these two here. There is a kind of sureface fluidity Nono discovered a directedness, that the politics of his subject matter had I believe had given him. His political music at least in the Seventies came to be surface bound, and he found the electronics medium as an equivalent to documentary like gestures, where greatoer amounts of raw evidence can be utilzed, as his numerous electronic works attest. He came to really abandon the concert hall venue as a dead end, as many others as well.

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