Venice to Society: Luigi Nono 100

Luigi Nono - Incontri

We're back, and with the truly weird shit this time.

Say whatever you like about my little page, but no one alive is gonna give you Robert Palmer one day and this guy the next.

Who would even think to? I don't suspect there are many people in the world rocking Addicted to Love and Sul ponte di Hiroshima back to back, I am just saying.

If there are, I definitely want to meet them, and raid their music collections.

So yeah, another centennial! I love these, because they always concern figures whose output survives long after their physical body quits.

While this cat had a physical body, he used it -- and a whole lotta mind -- to create some of the most unclassifiable and out-there sounds of our epoch.

The saying goes that King Crimson is what you get when you cross Béla Bartók and Jimi Hendrix. Well, this guy here is maybe what you get when you cross the twelve-tone serialists like Webern and Schoenberg with, say, Italian madrigals.

His most famous work is all about the destruction of Hiroshima, if that gives any idea to the uninitiated.

What all his stuff shares is the sense of total, no-fucks-given abandon, and of a person not interested in holding back or sugarcoating what he's doing.

He was born, and died 66 years later, in Venice, and his music somehow reflects a strain of that city's legendary Romanticism, albeit couched in an often disturbing and challenging framework.

What to do to mark the centennial of an extraordinary figure of uncompromising aesthetic temperament such as Luigi Nono?

I know! How about 5 1/2 full hours of French radio broadcasts, containing unissued and often stunning performances of some of his most iconic compositions?

I knew you'd agree.

Luigi Nono

A Portrait I & II

FM broadcasts, 1992-2019

A Portrait I:

01 Varianti (1957)

02 Due espressioni (1953)

03 Per Bastiana Tai-Yang Cheng (1967)

04 Sarà dolce tacere (1960)  

05 Ha venido, Canciones para Silvia (1960)

06 ...sofferte onde serene... (1976)

07 Incontri (1955)

08 Polifonica, monodia, ritmica (1950) (original version)

09 Risonanze erranti, a Massimo Cacciari (1986)

10 Polifonica, monodia, ritmica (1950-51)

11 Canti per tredici (1955)

12 Caminantes... Ayacucho (1986-87)

13 Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell'op.41 di Arnold Schönberg (1950) (excerpt)

14 Il canto sospeso (1956)

A Portrait II:

15 Canti di vita e d'amore: Sul ponte di Hiroshima (1962)

16 ...sofferte onde serene... (1976)

17 Omaggio a György Kurtag (1983)

18 Como una ola de fuerza y luz (1971-72)

19 Il canto sospeso (1956)

20 ...sofferte onde serene... (1976)

21 ¿Dónde estás hermano?  (1982)

22 No hay caminos, hay que caminar: Hommage à Andrei Tarkovsky (1987)

23 ...sofferte onde serene... (1976)

Total time: 5:28:41

disc breaks go after Tracks 06, 10, 13, 17 & 19

Tracks 01-03: Orchestre National de Lyon, Thierry Fischer - Paris FR 1.18.2007

Tracks 04-05: Arnold Schönberg Choir, Erwin Ortner - Salzburg AT 8.14.1999 (Claudia Barainsky - soprano)

Track 06: Maurizio Pollini (piano) - Salzburg AT 8.14.1999

Track 07: Orchestre Philharmonique RTF, Hermann Scherchen - Paris FR 1.20.1964

Tracks 08-09: Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ingo Metzmacher - Paris FR 5.27.1999 (Susanne Otto - mezzo)

Tracks 10-11: Ensemble Modern, Peter Eötvös - Paris FR 8.31.1992

Track 12: Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Ernst Senff Chor/Solistenchor Freiburg Experimentalstudio des Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftungs des SWR, 

Arturo Tamayo - Berlin DE 3.19.1999

Track 13: Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Zoltan Pesko - Paris FR 1.20.2007

Track 14: Austrian Radio Orchestra & Choir, Alicja Mounk - Paris FR 9.22.1995

Track 15: Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tito Ceccherini - Paris FR 11.17.2017 (Anu Komsi - soprano, Peter Tantsits - ténor)

Track 16: Julia Den Boer (piano) - Paris FR 11.17.2017

Track 17: Ensemble Intercontemporain, Matthias Pintscher - Paris FR 10.17.2014 (Lucile Richardot - contralto)

Track 18: SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden & Freiburg, Ingo Metzmacher - Paris FR 11.18.2014 (Laura Aikin - soprano, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger - piano)

Track 19: SWR Sinfonieorchester, Peter Rundel & SWR Vokalensemble, Michael Alber - Berlin DE 9.11.2017 (Laura Aikin - soprano, Jenny Carlstedt - alto & Robin Tritschle - tenor) 

Track 20: Hidéki Nagano (piano) - Paris FR 3.16.2019

Track 21: Choeur de la Radio de Stuttgart SWR, Marcus Creed - Paris FR 11.17.2010

Track 22: Ensemble Intercontemporain & Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris, Jonathan Nott - Paris FR 4.9.2011

Track 23: Julien Le Pape (piano) - Paris FR 4.9.2009

2019 upgraded version of a 2008 compilation of unissued performances 

from various off-air master cassette captures of France Musique FM broadcasts from 1992 - 2019
1.71 GB FLAC/direct link

I might do one more this month, it depends on what the tea leaves say and if I can determine where the track markers go.

Anyway I hope you'll take the plunge into the Avant Garde with us and say Yesyes to Luigi Nono, born this day in 1924 and still creating ripples of radiant, resonant ruckus throughout the rhizosphere!--J.

1.29.1924 - 5.8.1990