It is through their music for piano that we
witness Luciano Berio’s and Giacinto Scelsi’s development as composers,
their life-long musical journeys. Both men early on had dreams of becoming
concert pianists; thus it seems natural that some of their most inspired
music was written for the piano. (Berio wrote periodically but continuously
for the piano all of his life; Scelsi’s solo piano output is one of the
largest of any composer from the past century.) Both men were fascinated
by the essence of sound. Their keyboard music reflects an innate
understanding of the sound-world of the pianoforte, that most Italian of
instruments. All of their piano music, in different and unique ways,
capitalizes beautifully on the timbral possibilities of the piano; its
dynamic range, its resonances and decays, its colors.
As a performer of 20th and 21st-century
music, I have always been intrigued by the process of composition. Berio’s
and Scelsi’s methods of writing music were completely different. For Berio,
composing a piece of music was a journey; with Scelsi, music emanated from
him spontaneously. However, I am taken by the numerous startling moments in
Berio’s works, and how so much of his music feels impulsive and
off-the-cuff. Scelsi’s music, with its countless unexpected surprises,
often seems to strike a beautiful balance of daring instinctiveness and
inevitablility. This paradox of composition and improvisation has always
interested me, and I am eager to begin to touch the surface of it with this
program.
The music of Berio and Scelsi is as
variegated and fascinating as their lives. They both came under the
influence of 12-tone music early in their careers (Scelsi in the 1930’s,
Berio in the early 1950’s), but quickly went their own musical directions.
For the rest of their lives, they were constantly searching for new and
different ways of expressing themselves through their music. As open to
influence as they both were, Berio and Scelsi remained remarkably
self-assured in their likes and dislikes, something that I believe helped
contribute to their wonderfully uncompromising and original works. Their
solo piano music is unlike anyone else’s; it deserves to be heard more
often, and hopefully will as we progress into this still-new century.
-- BLAIR MCMILLEN