SALVATORE SCIARRINO (b.1947): Efebo con radio for Voice and Orchestra (Sonia Turchetta [voice]), Il giornale della necropoli for Accordion and Orchestra, Storie di altre storie for Accordion and Orchestra (Teodoro Anzellotti [accordion]), Autoritratto nella notte for Orchestra.

Description: 'Boy with radio' is a somewhat autobiographical piece of music theater, recalling the composer's childhood, turning the dial on an old-fashioned radio set and hearing fragments of broadcasts - sometimes clear, sometimes distorted almost to the point of unrecognizability. With an unerring ear for texture and a touch of humor, Sciarrino depicts the trivial dance tunes, popular songs, commentary, and the nightmarishly circling electronic interference that threatens to engulf the whole, in an ingenious piece of 'instrumental musique concrète'. Il giornale suggests a similar process, but more seriously and more globally; this is music of disintegration, the decay of whole societies, the disappearance of individuals. The music is fragmentary, making much use of ghostly remnants of orchestral finery in the form of noise textures and whispered, almost-played instrumental sounds. Autoritratto is a nocturne, Sciarrino-style; all unquiet whispers and shadowy suggestions of thoughts just out of conscious reach. Stories of other Stories implants literally quoted works of Mozart, Machaut and Scarlatti into a substrate of modern orchestral texture, slowly churning and sinister or mechanistically incongruous, as though these artifacts of musical history, having been subsumed by the passage of time have somehow re-emerged in our time, transformed but instantly recognizable. WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne; Kazushi Ono, Lucas Vis (Il giornale).