Berio: Sinfonia/Ekphrasis
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Berio: Sinfonia/Ekphrasis
Martin Luther King Jr., Samuel Beckett, Gustav Mahler and Claude Levi-Strauss all make their way into Sinfonia as lyrical and musical sources, but the oddest thing about Berio’s 1968 piece is that its debut performance featured the Swingle Singers intoning these typically fragmented vocal parts. Now, Berio’s compositions were always about ripping apart decades and centuries of culture whether it be philosophy, literature or music tossing the shreds in the air and calling the resulting mess on the floor a composition, but at no point was it done as beautifully and poetically as in Sinfonia, which is rightfully one of his most well-known works. Though the Swingle Singers aren’t part of this 80th anniversary tribute performance by the Göteborgs Symfoniker (conducted by Peter Eötvös, one of Europe’s most impressive conductors of new music), it makes excellent use of the always-impressive London Voices in one of their most daring performances.
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2005.