BRUNO MADERNA (1920-1973): Venetian Journal for Tenor, Orchestra and Tape, Juilliard Serenade for Chamber Orchestra and Tape, Kranichsteiner Kammerkantate for Soprano, Bass and Chamber Orchestra, Concerto for Oboe and Chamber Ensemble.

Catalogue Number: 03J092
Label: Stradivarius
Reference: STR 33651
Format: CD
Price: $17.98
Description: Venetian Journal is a cheerful, clever pastiche of all things Venetian, a sometimes slightly bawdy monologue (mostly in English) for the character of an 18th-century traveller, written by a 20th-century American humorist, Jonathan Levy. Snatches of Baroque and Classical compositions - clearly recognizable - are interwoven with Maderna's own score, which incorporates a tape part and some degree of Maderna's characteristic highly controlled aleatory, though the text has to be presented in its entirety, and in order. The Serenade, which precedes it by one year, is an exercise in the kind of total compositional freedom to which Maderna aspired; aleatoric, and with the optional simultaneous presentation of the ambient 1970 tape composition 'Tempo Libero I', which largely consists of 'found' sounds and speech from everyday life. Gleefully anarchic and affirmative. Maderna's favourite instrument, the oboe, is an unexpectedly lyrical and poetical protagonist in the composer's first concertante work for the instrument, from 1962, otherwise an exercise in Darmstadt serial pointillism. The chamber cantata utilises material from an anti-Fascist song of the Resistance; the musical material is used only as a point of departure, transformed to the point of unrecognizability into Maderna's own idiom, though the texts are preserved intact. Texts included in original languages; no translations. Luca Avanzi (oboe), Aida Caiello (soprano), Fabio Buonocore (tenor), Christian Senn (bass), Divertimento Ensemble; Sandro Gorli.