Sinfonia for Eight Voices and Orchestra

Luciano Berio

London Voices, Göteborgs Symfoniker (Peter Eötvös, cond.)

In 1968, This Was Radical Stuff in Concert Halls . . .

This piece can seem an inventory of worries on the minds of ordinary Americans in 1968, the year it premiered. In the first movement, there's a tumultuous explosion that has been described as the musical equivalent of the atomic bomb—which was, at the time, the elephant in the cold war living room. Then comes a prayer of sorts spelling out the name "Martin Luther King," the civil rights leader who'd recently been murdered. The third movement features voices babbling in several languages and extravagant collisions of themes, several echoing Wagner, a cacophony that has been interpreted as a comment on rapid population growth. In the fourth, Luciano Berio (1925–2003) attempts to draw order out of the preceding Tower of Babel soundscape. In the fifth section, which wasn't finished when the New York Philharmonic premiered it, the Italian composer uses huge, zooming lunges as his finale; some heard these as an admiring, if veiled, response to the U.S. space program.

The Sinfonia can be appreciated both for its topicality and as an extension of the experimental spirit running through the culture at the time. That spirit didn't penetrate the fortresslike confines of the concert hall very often: The thriving avant-garde was alienated from traditional presenters, and its composers rejected history-steeped sounds as ferociously as orchestra audiences rejected new works. The Sinfonia is one of the few firebrand pieces of the era to be embraced by the classical establishment.

It deserves to be heard now for the way Berio integrates the voices into the overall fabric—sometimes the chattering crowd is the main element demanding attention, and sometimes the scattered voices haunt the periphery. The London Voices heard in this recording approach Berio with gusto—when they recite the scraps of text in the third movement, they do so with a great sense of purpose. It can be tricky to discern exactly what's under discussion, and at times that feels deliberate: Like other twentieth-century composers, Berio doesn't necessarily want to make things too easy on his listeners.

Genre: Classical
Released: 2005, Deutsche Grammophon
Key Tracks: "O King" (second movement); fifth movement.
Another Interpretation: New York Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein, cond.)
Next Stop: Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Fritz Reiner, cond.)
After That: Steve Reich: Different Train, Kronos Quartet.
Book Page: 81

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Comments:

#1 from Adam Birnbaum, La Jolla, CA - 07/22/2009 5:40

The reason the 3rd movement seems to echo Wagner is that it has extensive direct complete quotes from Mahler’s first symphony. It also quotes Ravel (La Valse), Stravinsky, Beethoven, R. Strauss, and others. It’s actually hilariously funny…

#2 from Adam Birnbaum, La Jolla, CA - 07/22/2009 5:42

Actually, one correction—it’s Mahler’s 2nd symphony, the scherzo mvt.

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