Berio: Sinfonia - Boulez: Notations I-IV - Ravel: La valse

Album review

While Luciano Berio's landmark Sinfonia is the main attraction of this 2018 release by Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony, the two other works on the program may be viewed as complementary, albeit somewhat anticlimactic, coming as they do after such a powerful opener. The centerpiece of Sinfonia is its famous third movement, "In ruhig fließender Bewegung," a musical collage built on the scherzo from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection," incorporating quotations from myriad sources, including Maurice Ravel's La Valse and Pierre Boulez's Pli selon pli, among numerous references to composers from Ludwig van Beethoven to Igor Stravinsky. Because it has a prominent place in Berio's palimpsest, programming La Valse is an obvious choice, though the inclusion of Boulez's Notations I-IV, not directly quoted in Sinfonia, is a bit more oblique; listeners may only find in it a tangential connection to the avant-garde chaos of the previous work. Even so, Sinfonia is more than enough to preoccupy listeners, and Morlot leads the orchestra and the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth in an exciting and sometimes hair-raising version. Because this is a live recording, some of the voices fade in and out in the welter of sound, and details that are easily picked out on a studio recording are harder to discern here. Even so, this fresh performance is required listening for fans of the piece, who will likely find something new with attentive listening.
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