Search - Luigi Nono, Rupert Huber :: Luigi Nono: Choral Works

Groundbreaking Choral Work

Christopher Forbes | Brooklyn,, NY | 08/29/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nono is the most human and engaging of the serialist set from Darmstadt. And his work for choral forces is unequalled, certainly among the serialists. He predated the vocal experiments of Ligeti and Berio by several years. This disc is a great sampling of early, middle and late period Nono. The first work on the disc is for choir and percussion. The music takes it's direction from Nono's seminal work, Il Canto Sospeso. The voices are treated as almost solo instruments, and the words of the text are treated serially along with other elements of the music. The result is a stunning wash of sound that can sound like a precusor to Ligeti's Requiem of 5 years later. The text is unusual for Nono at this time. It focuses on romantic love rather than his more typical political material, but the style clearly leads in the direction of his first great theater piece, Intollerenza. Nono's musical styles actually can be said to be summed up by his big theater works. The second choral work on this disc actually began as a study for a theater piece that never was developed, but you can hear in Da un Diario Italiano the spectacular vocal writing that would make Al gran sole carico d'amore such a shattering theatrical experience ten years later. The Diario is scored for 72 solo vocalists, but, unlike Penderecki's massed sounds, this work requires extreme precision in each of the parts, making it nearly impossible to find a performance. As such the work languished for years until this recording. And this performance reveals what a stunning piece this is. Based on collected texts from common Italians reacting to floods and uprisings, the piece has the deep humanism and love for people that characterized Nono's music in this period. The final work on the CD, Das Atmende Klarsein is one of Nono's first and finest works in his late style, and contains seeds that would flourish in the theatrical work Prometeo. This piece is post-serialist...neither tonal nor atonal. Nono is interesting in sonority here, specifically the sound of fifths. The work is basically monodic, with thickening of textures occuring at points in the choral writing. We are worlds away from the density of Diario here. The sole accompaniment to the choir is a bass flute which is processed with live electronics. The flute is relegated to interludes which comment on the previous section and provide contrast. The overall feeling of this work is contemplative...almost otherworldly. I don't know quite what was driving Nono personally duringthis period, but the break in style is so profound, it is almost as if he has become another composer...just as moving as the earlier work, but altogether different.Performances are superb, particularly in the Diario, which I imagine may be one of the most difficult choral works ever composed (and don't let anyone fool you....if someone sang wrong notes, it would be noticable in this music! That's an old slander against the avant-garde that is simply not true.) This is a highly recommended disc, one that I will come back too often."