Berio: Sinfonia; Eindrücke

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Berio's most celebrated opus is what a friend describes as a "kitchen-sink work:" the Italian composer, in a display of exuberance and virtuosity, seems to have synthesized all of his disparate preoccupations and fascinations--Samuel Beckett, Martin Luther King, Mahler, the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss--into an intensely personal orchestral fantasia. The result, which the composer describes as "perhaps my most experimental work," is ultimately joyous. Pierre Boulez conducts. --Joshua Cody

Berio: Sinfonia; Eindrücke, Music, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Ward Swingle, Swingle Singers, Regis Pasquier, 20th/21st Century Orchestral Work with Descriptive Title, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, More than Two Solo Voices with Orchestra, Orchestral, Vocal

Average customer rating:

Berio's masterpiece and another fine work, but get the budget reissue, and supplement it with Eotvos

Boulez NOT against bernstein

music lost in time's longevity

Boulez vs. Bernstein Redux

Ricardo Chailly and the Concertgebouw

Berio: Sinfonia; Eindrücke

Manufacturer: Erato
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Berio, Luciano | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
Symphonies | Forms & Genres | Modern, 20th, & 21st Century | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
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Luciano Berio: Corale (Sequenza VIII), for Violin, 2 Horns & Strings / Chemins II (Sequenza VI) / Chemins IV (Sequenza VII) / Ritorno degli Snovidenia, for Cello & Small Orchestra / "Points on the Curve to Find...", for Piano & 22 Instrumentalists - Pierre Boulez

Luciano Berio: Laborintus 2

Berio: Sinfonia; Ekphrasis

20/21 - Berio: Sequenzas / Ensemble InterContemporain

Xenakis: Orchestral Works & Chamber Music

ASIN: B000005E60
Release Date: 1992-04-28

Tracks:

Sinfonia For eight Voices And Orchestra: I -
Sinfonia For eight Voices And Orchestra: II - O King
Sinfonia For eight Voices And Orchestra: III - In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
Sinfonia For eight Voices And Orchestra: IV -
Sinfonia For eight Voices And Orchestra: V -
Eindruke

Amazon.com

Berio's most celebrated opus is what a friend describes as a "kitchen-sink work:" the Italian composer, in a display of exuberance and virtuosity, seems to have synthesized all of his disparate preoccupations and fascinations--Samuel Beckett, Martin Luther King, Mahler, the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss--into an intensely personal orchestral fantasia. The result, which the composer describes as "perhaps my most experimental work," is ultimately joyous. Pierre Boulez conducts. --Joshua Cody

Customer Reviews:

Berio's masterpiece and another fine work, but get the budget reissue, and supplement it with Eotvos.......2007-01-22

This disc of two Luciano Berio works in performance by the Orchestre National de France and Pierre Boulez was originally released on Erato in 1986, and it is this version which this Amazon listing describes. However, Warner Classics reissued it at budget price in 2001 in their "Apex" line, a bargain which the contemporary music afficionado should seek out. As you shall see, I do not think this disc has the best performance of a key Berio work, but nonetheless it has much to recommend itself.

"Sinfonia" for eight voices and orchestra (1968-69) is one of Luciano Berio's greatest works, vast in its proportions and in the musical traditions it incorporates. The eight voices are meant to be jazz singers, and Berio wrote the piece for the Swingle Singers, who appear here in a later lineup. The first two movements are quiet and mysterious. In the first, the singers gently intone selections from Levi-Strauss' retellings of Brazilian myths, made so vague that only the phonetic properties matter. In the second movement "O King", an orchestration of an earlier independent work, the singers slowly build up to the name "Martin Luther King", who had been murdered the year before.

The third movement of "Sinfonia", the extroverted "In ruhig fliessender Bewegung", is the most famous. The skeleton of the work is the second movement from Mahler's "Resurrection" symphony, a little cut-up and reordered. Over this, Berio has a tenor reciting text taken mainly from Samuel Beckett's "The Unnamable" and Berio's own journalistic writings, and the orchestra responds with quotations from fifteen composers. For example, when the narrator uses the term "the lowing cattle, the rush of the stream", we hear part of Beethoven's "Pastorale" symphony, while a singer's cry "This is nothing but an academic exercise" is ironically accompanied by music by Hindemith. Every listener has his own favourite part of this movement, mine is when the narrator says "I have a present for you" and the orchestra responds with that big tutti chord that opens Boulez' "Don" (which is to say "Gift").

The fourth and fifth movements return to a subdued tone. The fourth brings back Levi-Strauss references and is rather brief. But for all my initial passion about the third movement, I find it is the fifth which is the most intriguing and satisfying. Originally "Sinfonia" was written in four movements, but after the first performance, Berio was unhappy that these four movements were not reconciled to each other. In the fifth movement he subsequently wrote, therefore, we hear references in the form of quotation and harmonic development to the original four movements, a savage mix of voices, confused percussion, and threatening trombones a la Per Norgard's fifth symphony. A splendid end to a massive work.

For a long time, this was *the* recording of the "Sinfonia" to have. However, I must say I find it superseded by that on Deutsche Grammophon in the "20/21" series, where Peter Eotvos leads the Goteborgs Symfoniker. In the third movement, Eotvos keeps it going at a very nice clip, creating a dizzying parade of images. Boulez, on the other hand, keeps things quite slow; if one has already heard the Eotvos recording, terms like "molasses" come to mind. Also, Ward Swingle's narration, while it might have worked for Berio in forty years ago, now makes this sound like a dated '60s happening, and the Eotvos performance Nonetheless, Boulez's handling of the other four movements is quite fine, and I certainly invite Berio fans to get this.

The liner notes for "Sinfonia" consist only of Luciano Berio's own programme note, which covers all the basics. However, those enraptured by the piece would do well to seek out David Osmond-Smith's PLAYING ON WORDS: A Guide to Luciano Berio's 'Sinfonia' (University of Chicago, 1987) ISBN 0947854002.

Even if the performance of "Sinfonia" is not my favourite, the following "Eindrucke" for orchestra (1973-74) is very entertaining. Where does one go after one has reconciled himself to the whole classical tradition, giving birth to the first postmodern symphony? Evidentally back to modernism, but of a fresh new type. "Eindrucke" is a quintessential 1970s Berio piece, interested in organically generating material from strict processes, while still remaining dramatic and easily accessible..

I should add that this is an IRCAM recording, meaning that these two works appear in crystal-clear sound. Bottom line: get the Eotvos recording and this, and enjoy a thrilling tour de force of the 20th-century music.

Boulez NOT against bernstein.......2006-04-27

Boulez's recording of "Sinfonia" is fascinating in that it creates a revisionist view of Berio as a far "cooler" composer than he was. Granted, the complicated score works on that level, and the reserve with which Boulez interprets lends an organicism to the work's slow movements, and a direction to the first.

Just a word of correction to other reviewers: the original LP, which is quite outstanding, has Berio conducting, not Bernstein, and it lacks the fifth movement, which gives it an almost elegiac quality. What's more, while--through Boulez's championing and elsewhere--Berio has been viewed as a rather "formal" or cerebral composer, his original recording is, if anything, remarkably romantic. It's interesting to see how the London recording (rather cool, crystalline--even more reserved than Boulez) and the Boulez contrast with the Berio and, to a lesser extent, the fine Chailly recording in their attitudes towards the third movement's "Mahlerian" text. A conductor's attitude towards Mahler (ironic, detached, involved, "romantic") goes a long way towards showing what kind of message their Sinfonia will give.

The Sinfonia was constructed with more than a little doubleness in mind, and, to that extent, the Boulez is a valuable, ostensibly dispassionate essay on all Berio's worldview circa '68. Two interesting counterpoints: Boulez took over for Bernstein at the NYPhil in '69. Also, while writing the Sinfonia, Berio wrote a widely circulated (christian science monitor) critique of the twelve-tone establishment, although he quotes Boulez during Sinfonia. Boulez's championing of Berio suggests that ideological lines are not nearly as solid as we might at first presume.

music lost in time's longevity.......2005-02-28

I don't know; Berio's music doesn't seem to have a longevity factor, and he is to blame for like Stockhausen he did pounce,manipulate on whatever was the latest cultural expressive "buzz" of the time, like here in 'Sinfonia' utilizing the Swingle Singers,and the gestures,scat singing, in hip dip self-conscious dialogue, like I'm here you know it now, thanking (in this recording) Mr. Boulez for conducting,or ". . . shall I recite now, I think I will say my poem. . . "and Sixties Rebellions graffiti,or the wrongheadedness of dropping texts of Beckett here is horrible, and I don't think Beckett would have approved of his chiseled-like texts being used as fodder for this self-conscious COOLNESS projected here.The sustained timbres,quiet reflective dedication to Martin Luther King,"O King" was the one and only serious musical work of this period to this greatest of American leaders.And this movement is frequently played by itself, But Berio was not one drawn to politics,and had words with those who did as the late Hanns Eisler and Luigi Nono.But even Berio's operas inhabit a safe complaisant "time lost" the same collecting all the iconic buzzes of the 20th Century,as in"A King in Waiting" from acrobats, to femme fatales,live ravens to lost befuddled directors, ( a la Fellini 'Otto e Mezzo'),music about itself,not really looking outward,to cross borders with text and timbre. "Sinfonia" is really onl;y know for one movement, like the avant-garde's "hook",where all the quotes appear,"In ruhig fliessender Bewegung" like Debussy's "La Mer", Ravel, R.Strauss,"Der Rosenkaviler" and Mahler's St'Anthony,"second symphony" he was working in Palermo at the Catania Library that had seldom seen these modern scores.
When I first heard "Sinfonia" I was struck I said "is this the path to the future after the Beatles",this crosfertilization of the avant-garde and popular culture?Back then we thought culture in the West as cinema was transformative; well we are here now, and all paths have lead no where. In fact all we have now are composers who want to be loved, obsessed with popular culture,or themselves and the "buzz", So I guess Berio saw something profound in the late Sixties. But all paradigms have changed and "Sinfonia" possibly rings true in a museum, like a document and that which was.
Luciano is an incredible orchestrator however, coming from the one-dimensional culture of Fascist Italy the cultural freeze, where he learned incredibly quickly as his late Fifties "Epihanies" for female vocalist and orchestra attests.Berio it seems always chose the shortest distance between two points in the creative compositional implications within the post-war generation, opposite let us say Luigi Nono who at the end of his life started at the beginning again with a renewal of timbral,acoustic/live electronics and spatial interests in music, this while Berio's aesthetic grew more one-dimensional simplified and predictable. Boulez does bring some nice wonderful clarity to this complex score certainly more than Bernstein who hadn't a clue on the post-war avant-garde and the nuances and subtleties of modern orchestrations.

Boulez vs. Bernstein Redux.......2004-12-06

While I do agree that the Bernstein recording of Berio's masterwork is the better performance of the two, Boulez brings a nouance to his conducting that I think can only come from the fact that the piece had aged somewhat by the time he was conducting it. The piece might be viewed as less topical by that time, but Boulez manages to make it speak to a new audience with the same force that it had the first time it was performed. I personally feel that it is just as meaningful now as ever, regardless of who performs it, but Boulez definitely makes it feel avant garde, even after so much time has passed.
Leaving all the qualitative discussion aside, this recording is available while Bernstein's is not (unless you happen to be lucky enough to know someone with the LP), and this recording includes the additional fifth movement while Bernstein's does not. I agree that Bernstein's should be made available no matter what one might think about its quality, but this recording is at least equally deserving of a listen. I do not agree with the previous reviewer that the sound quality is lacking, so even if one loves the other recording, one should be able to buy this one as well without worrying about getting a badly-produced recording.

Ricardo Chailly and the Concertgebouw.......2004-06-22

If you are a fan of this great piece and haven't heard the (out of print) recording by Ricardo Chailly and the Concertgebouw -- buy it used, now: Polygram Records, #425832. It has all of the clarity and insight of this Boulez performance, but it also has great big dollops of humor, passion, wonder, mystery, etc.; it lets go. It also includes Berio's late orchestral masterpiece, "Formazione", as well as the chamber orchestra version of the "Folksongs" wonderfully sung by Jard Van Nes. The greatest Berio CD -- program, performance -- I know of.

Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg · Berio · Carter · Kurtág · Xenakis

Average customer rating:

A great purchase for new fans modern music
powerful showcase of the last century
Best Single Collection of Modern Music

Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg · Berio · Carter · Kurtág · Xenakis
Arnold Schoenberg , Luciano Berio , Elliott Carter , Gyorgy Kurtag , Sir Harrison Birtwistle , Gerard Grisey , Iannis Xenakis , Hugues Dufourt , Brian Ferneyhough , Pierre Boulez , Ward Swingle , Regis Pasquier , Phyllis Bryn-Julson , Adrienne Csengery , Istvan Matuz , and The Swingle Singers
Manufacturer: Elektra / Wea
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Octets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Septets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Classical | Box Sets | Stores | Music
ASIN: B000005EDU
Release Date: 1995-06-06

Tracks:

Pelleas Und Melisande - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Introduction - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Theme - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation I - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation II - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation III - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation IV - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation V - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation VI - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation VII - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation VIII - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Variation IX - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Finale - Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Tracks:

I - Regis Pasquier
II - O King - Regis Pasquier
III - In ruhig fliessender Bewegung - Regis Pasquier
IV - Regis Pasquier
V - Regis Pasquier
Eindruke - Orchestre National De France

Tracks:

Concerto Pour Hautbois - Pierre Boulez
Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux - Pierre Boulez
Anaphora - Pierre Boulez
Argument - Pierre Boulez
Sandpiper - Pierre Boulez
Insomnia - Pierre Boulez
View Of The Capitol From The Library Of Congress - Pierre Boulez
O Breath - Pierre Boulez
Penthode - Pierre Boulez

Tracks:

Messages De Feu Demoiselle R. V. Troussova - Adrienne Csengery
For 16 Voices And 3 Instrumental Groups - Pierre Boulez
Modulations - Pierre Boulez

Tracks:

Jalons - Pierre Boulez
Antiphysis - Istvan Matuz
Version I - Pierre Boulez
Version II - Pierre Boulez

Amazon.com essential recording

Collecting five CDs for about the price of three, this set of Boulez recordings is without parallel among the conductor's new-music releases. Imagine getting Boulez's celebrated single CD of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and Eindrücke and his equally impressive single CD of Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande and Variations for Orchestra, bundled with four pivotal Elliott Carter works, Sir Harrison Birtwistle's electrifying ...AGM..., Gérard Grisey's Modulations, Iannis Xenakis's Jalons, Hugues Dufourt's Antiphysis, and Brian Ferneyhough's Funerailles, and you have an idea how far this set stretches.

There are the uproarious moments of Berio's clattery free-for-all approach easily juxtaposed against Schoenberg's more measured Variations, as it illuminates the crossroads of serialism and standard classical methodologies. The most astonishing moments come in the Kurtag songs, themselves echoing Pierrot Lunaire, and the Birtwistle work, which crosses extended vocal patterns with exclamatory orchestral interruptions to great effect. For anyone interested in Boulez's conductorly contributions to the postserial world, this is a surefire collection that opens the window on the great one's magic with difficult, thorny music. It also serves as a fascinating primer on the expansion of new music's techniques, especially when you consider the Elliott Carter works, all of them post-1975 and each uniquely expanding the American canon immeasurably, or the Grisey, Dufourt, and Ferneyhough works, as each of these composers came of age in the post-World War II era. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews:

A great purchase for new fans modern music.......2001-04-02

I just started getting into modern music a few years ago and this set was one of the best purchases I have made so far. It introduced me to several of my now favorite composers, as well as starting me off with a top-notch recording of their work. The $10 per CD price is very good for contemporary music (which usually runs closer to $20 for a CD). The music covers several composers in much greater depth than your average sampler, and every CD in the set would make a great individual purchase. In addition to the content, the recording quality and performance on each track is uniformly flawless. If you are new to avant-garde music, think of this set as an introductory greatest hits compilation that will remain a treasured purchase no matter how big your collection gets. If you're an experienced contemporary music collector you probably bought this CD as soon as you saw the names on it and the price.

powerful showcase of the last century.......2000-04-10

I concur this is the only place to find these masterworks, not all but the Carter pieces,Penthode I know of no other recording. This is a marvelously opaque like work, somewhat dry, Carter's penchant utilization of a rhythmic cell passed around the rather dry sounding ensemble. Especially exciting here is Antiphysis by Hughes Dufourt,a French composer philosopher who is quite outspoken on carrying the torch of European post serial modernity. This work is a veiled flute concerto,largely in two seamless movements where the soloist is simply part of the forever trmoili textures the first half of the work, blizzards of flute tones are conveyed,large doses of fluttertonguing,fast filigreed moments. At times the chamber ensemble seems to engulf powerfully the soloist knocking it out of commission and at times Dufourt with incredible surges of timbre. This is a surface piece of incredible power, long stridently sustained chords, like the internal tension of a suspension bridge, You are waiting for something to snap, it doesn't. The percussion moments in this work as well create great waves and impeccably controlled thunderous roars to stop on a dime. You would never know this piece is actually a miniature flute concerto. The flute lines tossed into all registers with colourful again fluttertonguing, wisps and long scale-like lines. Dufourt is not a prolific composer.So this is a rare treat.

Boulez's residencies with The Chicago Symphony over the past ten years has produced a few profound gems from the Post Romantic world,one not entirely his, and Schoenberg's tone poem 'Pelleus und Melisande' in one of them.This is an early post Wagnerian score double the legth of his equally successful 'Transfigured Night'.Unless you know the motives Herr Schoenberg had utilized from the original Maeterlinck play,the work engulfs one as one colossol tone poem/commentary on the wanderings and below the surface anxieties of the union of this pair of lovers,who never quite get it.Schoenberg as Debussy had visions of the darkest moments of the Maeterlinck with rounded timbral orchestrations. Boulez holds a taut reins here and controls this arduously long work with great vision. It's dark colours and thick textures are all balanced properly. You never sense the works length,it moves,lumbers into its moments quite well and when it hunkers down finally on an old fashion minor chord it is arresting.Chicago plays this music as no other,music written for them, with there overdosed,overexposed repertoire of post Romantics from the Solti Years. They put this expereince to its test in the 'Orchestral Variations' also of Schoenberg, a much later work from his brief year spent in Berlin in 1930, a time when he had full confidence in his visions for the dodecaphonic language. Boulez also enjoys this work with a full spectrum of shapes to lend direction from chamber like moments of some of the variations to discreet solos and duets emanating from the orchestral forces to full bodied statements. This is quite an achievement for this newly found language. But you can see Schoenberg moving into these untenable,new regions. For the isolated sense of expressionist colour seems to have been forsakened here,abandoned for a larger homogeneous one. If you know his 'Five Pieces for Orchestra',you sense an entire universe of difference.As if Wagner now has returned to haunt him. The Ensemble Intercontemporain bring a real sense of immediacy to the Ferneyhough, 'Funerailles',a score scaled down to 2 Violins, 2 Violas, 2 Cellos, Doublebass and Harp.It's in the same gestural habitation of the Dufourt, large textural plains,regions of tremoli,punctuated freely.You may not recognize Ferneyhough here this is an early work with large gestures,not the finely attenuated approach to structuring and shaping timbres as you might find for instance in his 'Etudes Trancendental' or the string quartets. Without the Harp here to punctuate the one-dimensional string timbre produced here this work would indeed have been tedious and bland. The right amount of penetrating timbre is here to give the work the thornyness it deserves.If you are a Xenakis fan then his Jalons (steps) here is for you. This is music about the density and timbre transformations. Almost like standing in front of an industrial contraption waiting for it to turn off or break down or heat up.Blast furnace like timbres and strident whistles are here.

Best Single Collection of Modern Music.......1998-12-21

Listen--this set is actually a great buy, though it may seem like too much of an investment. But for your 45 bucks you get five discs (only $9 per disc), and it has to be one of the best collections of modern music ever, played by Boulez' spectacular group, Ensemble InterContemporain. Look at what you get: Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra (his most beautiful serialist composition); Berio's Sinfonia (a contemporary classic); Carter's Oboe Concerto, Mirror on Which to Dwell, and Penthode (for Carter fans, the disc is a must, since it's currently the only place you can get the concerto and Penthode, both essential Carter); Kurtag's Troussova (searing), Birtwistle's AGM (powerful, mysterious), Ferneyhough's Funerailles (electric), and Xenakis's Jalons (one of his best). For one purchase, you'll find yourself right in the thick of modern music.

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