Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Dennis Russell Davies - Maderna & Berio: Now, And Then (2017)

Unlike many of his radical new music colleagues, Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) had a great affection for older music, especially that of the Italian Renaissance and Early Baroque eras. But his transcriptions had little to do with the orthodoxy of so-called historically informed interpretation. In the belief that works of art can be removed from their original contexts, he used contemporary instrumental resources to discover new meaning and a new validity in the works of old masters. His transcriptions of Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Legrenzi and Viadana are vividly conveyed by the RSI Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies in a program which includes Chemins V by Madernas good friend Luciano Berio (1925-2003). Chemins V is itself a transcription of sorts, a chamber orchestra version of Berios Sequenza XI. Soloist Pablo Marquez references flamenco and the guitars classical heritage, while the orchestra engages with the guitar on levels of expanded harmony. Dialogue develops, as Berio said, through multiple forms of interaction, from the most unanimous to the most conflictual and estranged.