Since his death Berio’s
music has not faded from the limelight.
Several discs have emerged of late but
this one is of especial interest because
of Andrea Lucchesini’s connection with
the composer. Lucchesini is pictured
with the composer on the CD cover and
inside the booklet. He worked regularly
with him and played the sonata in the
composer’s presence. The work which
is especially pertinent here is Berio’s
only Piano Sonata. This receives extensive
coverage in the booklet with an essay
by the performer another by the dedicatee
Reinhold Brinckman. There’s also a brief
note by Berio himself as well as a very
useful essay by David Osmond Smith.
Smith has written about Berio and is
an expert on 20th Century
Italian music. In his essay Smith outlines
Berio’s expertise as regards piano music
and also includes a very readable description
of the music.
The Sonata, Berio's
last piano work and one of his very
last works, opens the disc. That said,
I would like to consider the works in
chronological order beginning with the
Webernesque ‘Cinque Variazioni’. In
this work there are moments of great
stillness and moments of sudden, indeed
violent and wild, movement. Some variations
are short and fast, others slow and
reflective. You may be reminded of the
Boulez sonatas here: certainly the typical
pointillistic sound-world of the 1950s
and 1960s. The final effect is however
rather cerebral.
Sequenza IV is one
of a famous series Berio composed for
solo instruments. This explores the
keyboard more fully than the earlier
pieces. It also experiments with various
articulations for example it begins
with pianissimo staccato chords, suddenly
juxtaposed with faster passages and
strong staccato dissonances. Things
continue apace in a deliberately virtuosic
display. However light touches are needed
in toccata-like passages as well as
patience to allow the sounds to ‘speak’
into a following silence. Note also
the colourful tremolandi passages emphasizing
a single pitch with cascades of notes
on either side.
From there one might
move on to ‘Rounds’ of 1967, still very
much of its time, and investigating
a similar sound-world. Again the writing
is jagged with sharp, loudly-accented
chords then stillness, and punctuated
by silence. I was reminded of Stockhausen’s
‘Klavierstücke’. The effect is
playful and full of surprises. One single
pitch is heard more than any other,
a technique developed later in the Sonata.
The ‘Six Encores’ were
written over a 26 year period but are
curiously related. None of them jar
against each other. I suspect that Berio
would have been happy to have these
aphoristic pieces played singly as one-off
encores. One is called ‘leaf’. The rest
have German titles like ‘Fauerklaver’,
which is a sort of ‘perpetuum mobile’
of high virtuosity; it would make a
brilliant end to a programme.
Andrea Lucchesini was
a friend of the composer and worked
closely with him on a piano concerto
‘Echoing Curves’. As a result of a series
of brilliant performances Berio wrote
for him the two miniatures ‘Touch’ and
‘Canzonetta’ each for two pianists.
Here he is joined by his wife Valentina.
The pieces were wedding presents and
are absolutely delightful - light and
crepuscular.
So finally to the Sonata,
the work which opens the disc and the
longest one in the collection. The note
B flat is the still centre around which
the entire twenty-three minutes oscillates.
At first, not much happens and when
it does it’s very quiet. Twenty minutes
later all hell has broken loose in cascades
of notes, showering the entire instrument.
The gradually built up tension has been
released. The genius of this piece is
not only how it holds your attention,
but also how it sustains a single concept
over its extensive span. In this work,
as in all of them, Lucchesini is totally
in command. Although I believe another
disc of the piano music has emerged
(Francesco Schlime, Sisyphe) Philip
Clark (Gramophone) seems in little doubt
that it cannot equal Lucchesini’s "keen
ear for the culminating structure"
of the sonata.
It’s good to know that
Berio is well served by performers and
recording companies at a time when,
soon after death, any composer can be
overlooked and in some cases remain
forgotten. What we need next are some
more recordings of the chamber music
- perfect for this very enterprising
and laudable Avie label.
Gary Higginson
Andrea Lucchesini (piano); Valentia Pagni
Lucchesini (piano)* 
