Hannu Lintu, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Virpi Raisanen - Berio: Ritirata notturna di Madrid, Calmo & Sinfonia (2014) [Hi-Res]

Without doubt the major work of Luciano Berio's career, Sinfonia was a touchstone of the avant-garde of the mid-20th century, because it represented virtually all of the cutting-edge techniques in its collage of texts and musical quotations and created a sensation unlike any contemporaneous work. Originally composed for the Swingle Singers, the pop vocal octet led by Ward Swingle, and premiered by Berio and the New York Philharmonic, Sinfonia conveyed the confusion and unrest that dominated the news and the arts in 1968, yet transcended its time to be just as urgent and meaningful today. This 2014 Ondine multichannel SACD of Hannu Lintu's performance with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra boasts superior sound that makes other recordings seem flat in comparison, and the eight amplified singers who take on the Swingle Singers' virtuosic parts are evenly matched in skill and range. Important sections to sample are the second movement, "O King" (track 4) and "In ruhig fließender Bewegung," the massive collage on Mahler's Scherzo from the "Resurrection" Symphony (track 5), in which Berio combines texts of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Samuel Beckett with overlapping references to other seminal classical works. This album also includes two later compositions from the 1970s, Calmo, for mezzo-soprano and 22 instruments, and the four versions on Boccherini's Rittrata notturna di Madrid. While these short pieces reflect Berio's abiding interests in experimental music for voice and re-orchestrations of Classical music, they have little emotional impact when placed next to the monumental Sinfonia, which overwhelms with its intensity and chimeric originality.