Just a few weeks before his death in May last year, Luciano Berio completed Stanze, a cycle of five songs for baritone, men's chorus and orchestra, lasting about 25 minutes. The British premiere, conducted by Pierre André Valade with Francois Le Roux as the soloist, was the highlight of the Philharmonia's contribution to Omaggio, the South Bank's Berio festival. The composer also wrote a short programme note for the work, in which he emphasised that the title has nothing to do with stanzas in the poetic sense, but is the Italian word for rooms; in his piece each room is inhabited by a different poet, all evoking images of "an unmentionable other and other place".

But that "unmentionable" place is unmistakable. This is a work obsessed with death; it is confronted head on or obliquely in every one of the poems. In some ways, Stanze is Berio's Das Lied von der Erde, a conscious leave-taking, a farewell to his friends and to the world, though far less resigned and accepting than Mahler's. The orchestral layout is inverted, with the low strings to the conductor's left and the violins to his right, the woodwind, brass and percussion connecting the two blocks, and the men's chorus (the London Voices) arrayed around them, revoicing the sonorities in typical Berio fashion.

If there is a hint of a symphonic scheme behind the alternating slow and fast settings, it is less immediate than the sheer power of the texts, sung in German, Italian and English. Paul Celan's Tenebrae is underpinned by halting, low-register chords from the orchestra; Giorgio Caproni's Ceremonious Traveller's Farewell is turned into a stormy scherzo, full of rustlings and tappings. Edoardo Sanguineti's untitled text is the forbiddingly dramatic centre piece, while a poem by Alfred Brendel becomes a haunted dance of death before the drifting chords of Dan Pagis's The Battle offer just a hint of peace.

The settings are not often openly lyrical; ideally perhaps, too, Stanze needs a darker voice than Le Roux's to set against the orchestra and chorus, but he sang them all with the right restrained intensity for what is a very bleak and very beautiful last work.

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