May 21, 2022
PASSION
Luigi Dallapiccola, Tartiniana Seconda
Ferrucio Busoni, All’ Italia! (In modo napolitano)
Busoni, Elegy
Luciano Berio, O King
Busoni, Berceuse Élégiaque (arr. Arnold Schoenberg)
Berio, Chamber Music (3 movements, text by Thomas Wolfe)
Berio, Wasserklavier, Erdenklavier, Luftklavier, Feuerklavier
Berio, Sequenza No. 2
Igor Stravinsky, Suite Italienne
Italian cars, shoes, and sculpture resonate for everyone with the idea of modernism, yet Italian music, not so much. Luigi Dallapiccola and Igor Stravinsky, perhaps inspired by Nicolo Paganini’s diabolical virtuosity, fashioned fiendish violin suites of Italian Baroque dance mannerisms twisted by modern obsessions with the machine. Three very different elegies by Ferrucio Busoni emerged from the end of the nineteenth century as it crashed into WWI, the influenza pandemic of 1918, and the aftermath of both. Luciano Berio penned an intimate elegy of Martin Luther King that would grow to be included in Berio’s shatteringly original Sinfonia. The ultra-modernist writer James Joyce collected his love poems as “Chamber Music” and Berio set them as a quartet offering to Dallapiccola. Sequenza II for Harp abandons stereotypes and turns to electronic sounds. The four elements: water, earth, air, and fire inspire Berio to make a set within his six scintillating encores.
Performers:
Peabody Southwell, soprano
Movses Pogossian, violin
Steven Vanhauwaert, piano
Mark Alan Hilt, conductor