Cheap Luigi Nono (Music) (Luigi Nono, Michael Gielen, Sinfonieorchester Des Sudwestfunks Baden) Price

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Customer Reviews of Luigi Nono

The Variazione canoniche were written in 1949 and based on the tone row from Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon (the choice of a political work as the basis for this piece should be no surprise to those who know of Nono's subsequent career). This attractive work is in four sections (none of which are strictly variations), and demonstrates just how far away Nono was from many of the contemporaries he is often compared to: while Boulez and Stockhausen took their cue from Webern, Nono was jumping off from the world of Berg and Dallapiccola. The outer movements are slow and distinctly Bergian in their atmosphere, the central movements are faster and more aggressive, but also prone to pointillism and long silences. At the time of writing this work, Nono had not met actually Schoenberg, but perhaps the homage affected his life in an unexpected way: a few years later he was to marry the elder composer's daughter Nuria.

The concert continued with a brief, late work. A Carlo Scarpa, written in 1984, is an austere elegy for an architect friend of the composer. Using only the the notes C and E flat (and microtonal fluctuations around them) it conjures up a powerful, melancholic atmosphere. The occasional sudden fortissimi are shocking given the restraint and delicacy of much of the writing.

Finally, the concert featured the premiere of the 1987 work No hay caminos, hay que caminar..., for seven spatially separated instrumental groups. This occupies much the same musical orbit as A Carlo Scarpa, with minimal musical material, silence alternating with gentle microtonal floating around single notes, before ferocious eruptions from one or other of the ensembles breaks the tension. This is an extraordinary work, particularly live (a recording can't capture all the spatial effects) and in a good performance it is a shattering experience. It's also one of those pieces that has to be listened to loudly--the violent outbursts need to be near-deafening for the full effect to come through.

The performances here are stunningly intense and superbly played, and this disc has to be regarded as a first choice; though a rival Col Legno recording directed by Mario Venzago, which includes Variazione canoniche and No hay caminos as well as the only available recordings of Incontri and Varianti, is also very worthwhile.

Early and Late Nono
This is a marvelously played cd of some very beautiful works by Nono. If you are new to this composer, but interested in wonderfully made avant-garde music, this CD is a great place to start.

The revelation for me on the disc is the Variazoni canoniche. This is one of the first Nono pieces written at Darmstadt. It is based on a twelve-tone row from Schonberg's Ode to Napoleon. The choice is interesting, both because the Ode is one of Schonberg's more political works, and as such obviously appealed to Nono, and because it is also a row that is less stringently atonal. There are some obvious tonal points in the row which Schonberg had exploited in the Ode and which Nono also exploits in this much more serial work. The piece caused a bit of a stir at Darmstadt, as Nono violated one of the sacred canons of serialism. He included octave doublings in several of the variations. Serialists believed that octave doublings would give too much weight to certain notes, thereby destroying "atonal equilibrium." Time has blunted this as an issue and what remains is a work that shows influences of Webern and Schonberg, but also shows a mastery of orchestral effect and an expressive style that is unique to Nono. This is a marvelous work of the post-war serialists, perhaps one of the most lyrical and pleasing.

The other two works on the disc date from the 1980's in what is considered Nono's "late" style. In the 80's Nono retreated from the overtly Marxist content of his middle period works like como una ola fuerza de luz, and began a series of elegaic works dedicated to artists and other well known people. On this disc we get a short work dedicated to Carolo Scarpa, an architects and a work for Andrei Tarkowsky, the great Russian film maker. Both of these works show a reduction in musical elements. The first concentrates on microtonal variations on just two tones, and the last varies just a few more notes. This music resembles nothing so much as the music of Giacinto Scelsi. Nono uses many similar procedures to the eccentric Italian, added resonance, tone color shifts, and microtonal glissandi, to create movement and interest in the work. But Nono shows more control and craft than the Count. His late works have a logic in development that the more intuitive Scelsi never seemed to possess. Interestingly, the effect is just as otherworldly and spiritual as Scelsi's work, strange from a man who was a life long Marxist and not religious at all.

The performances on this CD are wonderful. Michael Gielen is one of my favorite conductors of modernist work (along with Boulez). He has a fine ear for orchestral color and detail, and yet manages to control the flow and shape of the music, something that is notoriously difficult in late 20th century scores. And kudos to Disque Montaigne for continuing their extremely important work, documenting the music of the European avant-garde. As minimalism and neo-romanticism have come to the fore in the last 30 years, record companies and the public have been tempted to relegate the music of the Darmstadt group to the dustbin of history. Much as I like the tonal music of the late 20th century, I feel that there is much to be discovered in the music of these neglected avant-garde composers as well. Disque Montaigne is committed to documenting important works of these composers and using excellent orchestras and performing groups to do so. Keep up this vital work!