Nicholas Kenyon 

Maderna, Berio: Now, and Then CD review – a heady mix

Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana/Davies (ECM)
  
  

Bruno Maderna
Real taste… Bruno Maderna Photograph: Interfoto/Alamy

A heady mix of new and old: the first recording of Berio’s Chemins V for solo guitar and small orchestra weaves a sensuous aura around the guitar’s nostalgic flamenco chords; atmospheric but elusive. The transcriptions of early Italian music by Bruno Maderna are in a style much favoured earlier in the 20th century, done with real taste. Dennis Russell Davies’s fine orchestra plays them with a clarity and poise that is rather untypical of their era. In the final Palestrina-Konzert, Maderna re-orchestrates a piece once thought to be by Pergolesi, whose first movement sets a canon not by Palestrina but actually by Byrd. How postmodern can you get?

 

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