Berio: Piano Music

Album review

A major achievement in the music of the composer and a major milestone in the career of the performer, this disc of the piano music of Luciano Berio played by Andrea Lucchesini is mandatory listening for anyone who loves contemporary music. It contains not only Berio's two best-known piano works -- Rounds and Sequenza IV -- and not only an enormous new work -- the Sonata per pianoforte solo -- but a pair of works written specifically for the pianist and his family -- Touch and Canzonetta. Along with the 6 Encores and the Cinque Variazioni, these pieces form a significant body of work that ranks with the piano music of Ligeti and Boulez in the post-modernist pantheon. As an important part of the success of the program, Berio's piano music is performed here by the composer's own chosen interpreter. Berio had heard Lucchesini's recording of Beethoven's Hammerklavier and decided he was the "pure pianist" to create ideal performances of his own music. In these recordings, Lucchesini, with his fluent technique, brilliant tone, and incisive intellect delivers what would have to be called ideal performances. Not only did he learn much of the music with the composer's guidance, he was continuously consulted by Berio on questions of keyboard technique during the composition of sonata. The connection is even closer in Touch, which Berio wrote as a four-hand piano piece for Lucchesini and his wife Valentina Pagni, as well as in Canzonetta, which he wrote as a four-hand piano piece for Pagni's mother and father. Both works are played here with wonderful agility and tremendous affection by Lucchesini and Pagni. Recorded in crisp sound by Avié, this disc is as good as it gets.
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