Luciano Berio at 100

Italian composer Luciano Berio, a pioneering and boundary-pushing master of serial and electronic techniques, was born on 24 October, 100 years ago. His work figures prominently in ECM’s New Series catalogue and the Voci album from 2002 stands out as a truly unique offering. Superb performances by Kim Kashkashian distinguish this exceptional recording, on which the violist plays Luciano Berio’s “Voci” and “Naturale”, masterworks inspired by Sicilian folk melodies. The compositions are connected here by authentic field recordings from Sicily, making evident some of the sources that have long fired Berio’s imagination. International Record Review: “On Voci the viola is ruminative, seeming to dwell in the interior spaces of these folk melodies, to enable them to sing in a new way and so reveal their continuity with the music of late modernity…. Kim Kashkashian’s playing is a real joy; everything is done with unfailing conviction, intelligence and warmth. Here’s a disc no one interested in the music of our time should miss.”

Editor’s Choice in Gramphone magazine and winner of the Diapason d’or, the recording was an international success garnering great praise from all across the globe. Writing for The New York Times, Paul Griffiths raved:

“The fit is quite remarkable, since, for all its sophistication, ‘Voci’ sounds as raw as its raw material. The achievement is partly that of Kim Kashkashian, the solo violist. ‘Voci’ is an almost uninterrupted monologue lasting more than half an hour, and Ms. Kashkashian approaches it with utter conviction in even the tiniest breath of a phrase. She lets herself bend into or away from the note, especially in a held crescendo. Her rhythm seems improvised. She finds lots of ways to make the viola sing, often with a fiercely energized plaintiveness strikingly close to the ways of the anonymous Sicilian singers.

… Of course, the achievement is Mr. Berio’s, too, in creating the conditions for a viola to enter the world of Sicilian folk music as its own. Where the solo part is concerned, this is a matter of thinking through the original melodies, of creating a line that appears to be thinking through them as it goes. … To recreate the Sicilian vocal style for a string instrument was a stroke of genius. A classical singer would have been bound to introduce an alien kind of cherishing care. Ms. Kashkashian, on the other hand, can equal the thrust of a folk singer, because her instrument is different….

After the voices of this magical piece and of its Sicilian antecedents, the recording offers a substantial coda in Mr. Berio’s ‘Naturale’, where the viola plays not inside a beautifully wrought orchestral space but on a rough stage with just two companions: a percussionist (here Robyn Schulkowsky) and the recorded voice of a Sicilian singer, now part of the piece. …The basic musical substance is much the same as in ‘Voci’, and Ms. Kashkashian has the same full presence. As the piece goes on, the taped singer’s interventions come to seem less and less a challenge to the natural voice Ms. Kashkashian creates with and in her viola.”