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Bruno Maderna Orchestral Works Vol. 4 quadrivium opens Maderna's final creative period in 1969, which is characterized by impressive and idiosyncratic works in a large symphonic instrumentation: »The title is perhaps somewhat literary. I was thinking of the four ›liberal arts‹ of the Middle Ages: arithmetic, algebra, music and astronomy [...] Added to that is the number Four has a magical effect: the four elements, the four ages of the earth […]«. Accordingly, he uses “four solo percussion instruments and a large orchestra divided into four groups, into four mixed instrument families […] The orchestra is an extension of the percussion. The work glides from informality to precision, from sheer virtuosity to the simplest, most intimate lyricism. The organization, the structure is cube-shaped. Sometimes the polished surfaces transform into a single block, sometimes they separate and show different facets. In doing so, one changes from the strict musical notation to an open form. Three or four places, including the end, show the asymmetrical conception of the quadrivium. The informal places are laden with a great many 'opportunities'. One of those ways is to return to the closed form.« As in almost all late compositions, strictly composed sections alternate with aleatoric passages. The conductor is given far-reaching freedom of decision regarding the design of the aleatoric, which means that the music that is heard can take on very different forms. One would have to listen to many different recordings of one and the same late Maderna work in order to get an impression of the variety of possibilities that each have a strongly changing effect on the overall impression. quadrivium is articulated in six sections, three of which are orchestral movements, two 'cadenzas' and one a solo quartet. These episodes are markedly contrasting in expression, timbre, tempo and dynamics. The numerous percussion instruments are distributed across the four orchestral groups as their respective centres. The alternation and overlapping of different timbres lend quadrivium a very special charm, and some connoisseurs consider this composition, which was premiered on April 4, 1969 in Royan, to be the pinnacle of Maderna's output. The compositional procedures in Aura, Garden of religion and Amanda resemble those in quadrivium. Aura was commissioned to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which premiered on March 23, 1972 in Chicago under Maderna's baton. The 54 participating strings are divided into six groups, while the horns and percussion, often used in punctuation, function as a single group. Here it is very difficult for the listener to distinguish aleatoric passages from those of a firmly prescribed structure, as the diverging sound sources are subjected to a process of amalgamation, their voices becoming entangled and creating moods ranging from tenderness and poetry to stormy outbursts. Aura is characterized by violent contrasts (e.g. the nostalgic expressiveness of the strings, reminiscent of Alban Berg, in the interplay with the eruptive violence of the brass) and, in the composer’s integrative world view, should be a kind of sounding mirror of the reality of life in all its simultaneous complexity and contradictions . According to Paolo Petazzi, "Aura impressively traces a process that gradually leads from the slow crystallization of the opening episode to the resolution in the final part". Amanda, according to Maderna "a kind of serenade", was written in 1966 and premiered on October 25, 1966 in Naples. Among the works compiled in Volume 4, it is the most uninhibited, cheerful, and also most lyrical composition. Apart from a few percussion instruments, the chamber ensemble consists exclusively of stringed instruments, including mandolin and guitar. In Amanda fragments from Maderna's earlier works emerge as Stela per Diotima on, and it should then turn in violin concerto from 1969, which some see as the culmination of the 1960s Amanda resurrect in a new environment. Garden of religion, composed in 1972, first presented to an audience in Tanglewood on August 8, 1972 and subsequently recorded for Columbia, was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation. Maderna had visited the American patron Paul Fromm and admired the idyll of his magnificent gardens. The working title of the work was initially Fromm's Garden, but Maderna knew how to make the dedication only recognizable to insiders in a very elegant way, by translating the German word ›fromm‹ into Italian, thus giving the archaic title Garden of religion came about. This work uses a smaller orchestra than its predecessors quadrivium or Aura. The conductor moves between the different orchestral groups as if they were describing different paths in a garden. A lot of room is left to free improvisation, of course with the inclusion of numerous detailed instructions from the composer, such as at the beginning that this is "like the awakening of small birds", later: "at the climax the conductor is free to add timpani and wind instruments, if he so wishes', or towards the end: 'the conductor is free to improvise with the trumpets and the double bass'. Christopher Schlüren |
program:
[01] quadrivium 27:43
for four percussionists and four orchestra groups (1969)
percussion:
Konrad Graf
Andrew Hepp
Burkhard Roggenbruck
Andreas Boettger
[02] Aura 16:30
for orchestra (1972)
[03] Amanda 13:19
for chamber orchestra (1966)
Alejandro Rutkauskas, violin
[04] Giardino religious 20:35
for small orchestra (1972)
total time 78:08
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Arturo Tamayo, conductor
Press:
6/2015
Bruno Maderna: Complete Works for Orchestra Vol. 1-5
Magical moments are something precious in music. They cannot be forced. It is all the more astonishing with what somnambulistic certainty Bruno Maderna manages to create such magical moments in his later works. About halfway through the piece charisma a child's voice sounds on tape, repeating the words "so wonderful" over and over again. The soprano picks up the phrase and within a few bars this "wonderful" makes the music stand still and marvel at itself. Or the fateful brass passages in Will have, who seem to tolerate no contradiction and spit defeatism in the listener's face with cynical rage. Or if unexpected. towards the end of Garden of Religion, a duo between the drum and the piano unfolds, through which the music suddenly seems to free itself from the "pious garden" and once again shows itself to be quite natural and unsettled. In general, one must emphasize the many episodic duets in the orchestra: the mandolin and the harp, the double basses and the trombone. And then there are those breath-taking endings: the violin concerto trickles out abruptly with a solo, with quite unspectacular spiccato in the middle register; and the end of quadrivium can hardly be surpassed in its sadness when the high strings no longer find an echo in their figures and no echo in the orchestra. That reminds. not without reason, to the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. After all, Maderna not only often cited Mahler as an important role model, he also labeled his own music with the title that had long been used to discredit Mahler's symphonies: "Kapellmeister music".
If you listen today through the 25 years of orchestral music that Maderna left behind. one has to ask oneself whether musical life has learned nothing from the Mahler case. In the case of Maderna too, there has been a failure to date to process the oeuvre and to adequately appreciate its musico-historical significance. There were only a few or no recordings of the orchestral works in particular, and many of them only in moderate productions of more documentary value. The fact that they recorded Maderna's entire orchestral work between 2009 and 2013 and released it on five CDs is a credit to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the conductor Arturo Tamayo and the NEOS label. (Only the three oboe concertos have been left out, probably also because they are already available in good recordings, for example with Heinz Holliger and Gary Bertini.)
If you listen to the 25 years of orchestral music that Maderna left behind, then a quarter of a century of music history passes you by, from the neoclassical works of the forties, the serial experiments of the fifties, the dramatic and theatrical excursions of the sixties to the big and openly conceived works of the seventies. One is reminded of the collaboration with the pianist David Tudor, the flutist Severino Gazzelloni and the oboist Lothar Faber, who performed many of these works, dated piano concert to Grand Aulodia, coined. One is also reminded of how stubborn and obstinate people once spoke about the future of music and how Maderna balanced the ideological trench warfare of aesthetics. Given his achievements as a conductor and as an integrative figure, his compositional importance was often overlooked. And a lot of things didn't look as if they could be compared with the great creations of Pierre Boulez or Luigi Nonos.
In fact, it cannot be denied that Maderna composed quickly and sometimes even carelessly. Especially in the last years of his life, when he suffered so much from his alcohol addiction that he could hardly fulfill his duties, a lot had to be improvised and reacted spontaneously. The result of this working process, however, are works in which many breaks come to light, works that do not appear streamlined or cast in one piece, but in which an extremely heterogeneous world of sound opens up. And it is precisely these breaks that regularly lead to the «magical moments» in the work mentioned at the beginning.
Nevertheless, these breaks in the work not only pose problems for the listener, but of course also for the musicians and producers. When the violin solo in the violin concerto almost breaks up around 16 minutes before Zagen, you have to realize that even Thomas Zehetmair doesn't want to succeed in shaping this fragile moment in a sovereign and self-confident way. The orchestra also knows these moments; the recordings do not always appear as if the works had been tried out to the last. And when in the studio you want to bring the many changes between the smallest formations and orchestral tutti within the pieces into a stereo sound image, the desperation is palpable. However, these slight flaws in the production are not disturbing, but can be heard as a break within Maderna's aesthetics. The imbalances, imbalances, imbalances and disproportions are part of his personal style, especially in his late work. Since the late XNUMXs, the works, and that is seven of the nineteen recorded works, have also shown traits of an open form, which the conductor often assembles spontaneously during the performance. Works that have to be set up and reinvented every time. So you can't speak of a reference or even a final recording anyway, but many different recordings are required to really get hold of the pieces. With these five CDs, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and NEOS have at least taken a first and important step in this direction.
Bjorn Gottstein
24.08.2012
03/2012
The orchestral works that Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) composed in the last few years of his life are among the most sheerly beautiful scores by any member of the post-1945 European avant garde. Since his early death, Maderna's parallel career as a conductor has tended to be remembered more than his achievements as a composer, and while Neos' series devoted to his orchestral works has been a valuable reminder of how consistent and rewarding his music is, this fourth installation is unquestionably the most significant so far.
It was with the magnificent Quadrivium for four percussionists and four orchestras of 1969 that Maderna entered the all-too-brief final phase of his development. That work's range of incident and instrumental colour, in music that seamlessly combines precisely notated passages with those in which the conductor is given the freedom to order and shape the material, is still a wonder, just as the densely layered string writing and vivid contrasts of Aura from 1972, and the crisply imagined imagery of Giardino Religioso from the same year show what a vivid and distinctive musical imagination Maderna's was. The odd piece out here is the earlier, rather extrovert Amanda from 1966. It is a serenade, as Maderna called it, for chamber orchestra in which stringed instruments (including guitar and mandolin) predominate, sometimes generating the brittle, twanging sonorities typical of Boulez's piece Eclat of the same era. Though, as these works show, Maderna was always much more than a Boulezian fellow traveller.
The performances under Arturo Tamayo are just what one wants, nicely detailed with a real confident sweep about them: the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra sound as if they've been playing this music all their professional lives. Naxos released a recording of Quadrivium last autumn, alongside a group of Maderna's early, rather Bartókian pieces, but there is much more presence to this one, though, given the changeable nature of the piece, both are worth hearing.
Andrew Clements