A leader of the avant-garde, most celebrated for his groundbreaking Sinfonia (1968),
Luciano Berio is presented in a much different light on this album of his appealing orchestrations of Baroque and Classical works, vividly performed by
Riccardo Chailly and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. These colorful transcriptions and reworkings of pieces and fragments by Purcell,
Bach, Boccherini,
Mozart,
Schubert, and
Brahms will, in most cases, attract listeners for their surprising accessibility and clarity. Most interesting and gratifying is
Berio's concerto arrangement of
Brahms' Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120, which clarinetist Fausto Ghiazza performs with suppleness and nuanced expression.
Berio's arrangement is quite Brahmsian in its rich Romantic timbres and layered doublings of sections. Yet there are some experimental explorations, such as the Variations on Papageno's Aria, which, in its weird fragmentation, amounts to a theoretical analysis of
Mozart's theme; and the strange breakdowns of harmony and melody that occur at the end of
Bach's unfinished Contrapunctus XIX from The Art of the Fugue and the Rendering of
Schubert's sketches for his last symphony in D major illustrate their incompleteness most strikingly. How seriously anyone should take
Berio's transcriptions is open to debate, but they offer fascinating glimpses into his probing intellect and show him as one of the most imaginative composers of the mid-twentieth century.