It may be at the risk of opening the flood-gates of the correspondence pages to say so, but to my ears no composer since Debussy has written more imaginatively and instinctively for the orchestra than Luciano Berio. By this I mean that Berio's musical ideas seem inseparable from the instrumental sonorities he uses to express them; he is no mere orchestrator. Like the best designers of gardens, Berio has a superb sense of how to balance density, texture, colour, accent and background. Never in the luxuriance of his orchestral scores does he fail to surprise and delight through the bold, skilful and deeply satisfying blending of sound.
As far as this new collection of Berio scores is concerned, the most irresistible lure is Formazioni, composed for (and premiered in 1987 by) the Royal Concertgebouw under Riccardo Chailly. Spanning 18 minutes in a continuous sweep of ideas and crammed with bold dramatic gestures, there's no denying its major status. Admittedly if judged solely by the opening and closing music it might seem to tread a well-established path: characteristically, Berio is intent here on balancing local detail (the score's volatile surface) against an underlying harmonic continuity. But at the centre of the piece there is something quite special: suddenly two powerful brass choirs, spatially separated to the extreme left and right of the stage, launch into a radiant clarion fanfare, haloed in a sheen of metallic percussion. Rarely before has Berio attempted such magnificence, and the results are electrifying.
As matters stand, Chailly's new performance of Sinfonia, Berio's classic orchestral score, is the only one available on CD. Fond as I remain of Boulez's virtuosic reading (Erato—not currently available), Chailly's balance of the orchestra against the eight amplified singers of Electric Phoenix more nearly achieves Berio's ideal—which is to say that the voices are only half-heard in the mass of sound. Boulez by comparison places Swingle II so far forward that they swamp much of the orchestral detail newly revealed by Chailly's reading.
The only disappointment on this record is the performance of Folk songs. Jard van Nes has a lovely voice, but she cannot match the versatility, linguistic flair and acting abilities of her competitors (the classic Cathy Berberian version on RCA is currently unavailable). For CD purchasers the question of choice simply need not arise: Linda Hirst and the London Sinfonietta (Virgin) win hands down. Childlike one moment, raucous the next, sexily jolly or bursting with mock-agony, Hirst fully dramatizes a score which in less able hands easily falls flat. Just as van Nes cannot supply the special qualities demanded by the vocal lines, so Chailly seeks refinement from his players where the London Sinfonietta under Diego Masson achieve exactly the right level of spontaneity.'