Bruno Maderna - Complete Works for Orchestra Vol.1

Bruno MADERNA (1920-1953)

Complete Works For Orchestra Vol. 1

Composizione N. 1 (For Orchestra, 1948–1949)

Composizione N. 2 (For Orchestra, 1950)

Studi Per “Il Processo” Di Franz Kafka (For Speaker, Soprano And Orchestra, 1950)

Improvvisazione N. 1 (For Orchestra, 1952)

Improvvisazione N. 2 (For Orchestra, 1953)

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra

Arturo Tamayo

Published on: November 26, 2009

Everything has to be re-examined: Bruno Maderna follows this post-war maxim by choosing simple, workshop-like titles. Composition, practice, improvisation – for him this means a maximum of freedom, and at the same time a commitment to developing polyphony, to the logic and mobility of thoughts. To a weightless, transparent form that points beyond itself and questions itself.

On the occasion of its 80th anniversary, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Tamayo, presents a complete recording of Bruno Maderna's orchestral music. In the middle of the early pieces is a vocal composition that was particularly appreciated by Maderna's friend and student Luigi Nono: a study of the “Process” fragment by Franz Kafka, here with the characteristic voices of Michael Quast and Claudia Barainsky.

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About this Edition:

Bruno Maderna: Complete Works for Orchestra Vol. 1–5

Magical moments are something precious in music. They cannot be forced. It is all the more astonishing how somnambulistic Bruno Maderna manages to create such magical moments in his later works. About halfway  through the piece  , a child's voice can be heard on tape repeating the words "so wonderful" over and over again. The soprano takes up the phrase, and within a few bars this “wonderful” makes the music itself stand still and marvel at itself. Or the fateful brass passages in  Aura,  which seem to tolerate no contradiction and spew defeatism in the listener's face with cynical anger. Or if unexpected. Towards the end of  Giardino religioso,  a duo emerges between the drum and the piano, through which the music suddenly seems to free itself from the “pious garden” and for once appears completely unspoiled and unsatisfied. In general, one must emphasize the many episodic duets in the orchestra: the mandolin and the harp, the double basses and the trombone. And then there are these endings that seem to take your breath away: the violin concerto ends quite suddenly with a solo, with completely unspectacular spiccati in the middle register; and the end of  Quadrivium  is hard to beat in its sadness, when the high strings no longer find an echo or response to their figures in the orchestra. That reminds. not by chance, to Gustav Mahler's symphonies. After all, Maderna not only often cited Mahler as an important role model, he also gave his own music the label that was long thought to discredit Mahler's symphonies: “Kapellmeister music”.

Listen today through the 25 years of orchestral music that Maderna left behind. However, one has to ask oneself whether musical life has learned nothing from the “Mahler case”. In the case of Maderna, too, there has been a failure to date to process the oeuvre and adequately appreciate its music-historical significance. There were only a few or no recordings of the orchestral works in particular, and many of them were only moderately produced and of more documentary value. The fact that they recorded Maderna's entire orchestral works between 2009 and 2013 and released them on five CDs is a credit to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the conductor Arturo Tamayo and the NEOS label. (Only the three oboe concertos were left out, probably because they are already available in good recordings, for example with Heinz Holliger and Gary Bertini.)

If you listen to the 25 years of orchestral music that Maderna left behind, then a quarter of a century of music history passes before you, from the neoclassical works of the 1940s, the serial experiments of the 1950s, the dramatic-theatrical excursions of the 1960s to the great ones and openly conceived works of the seventies. One is reminded of the collaboration with the pianist David Tudor, the flautist Severino Gazzelloni and the oboist Lothar Faber, who shaped many of these works, from the  Piano Concerto  to the  Grande Aulodia . One is also reminded of how obstinate and obstinate people once spoke about the future of music and how balancing Maderna had in the ideological trench warfare of aesthetics. Given his achievements as a conductor and as a figure of integration, his compositional significance was often overlooked. And a lot of it didn't seem like it could be compared with the great creations of Pierre Boulez or Luigi Nono.

It cannot be denied that Maderna composed quickly and sometimes even carelessly. Especially in the last years of his life, when he suffered from alcohol addiction to such an extent that he could hardly fulfill his duties, a lot of improvisation and spontaneous reactions had to be carried out. The result of this working process, however, are works in which many breaks emerge, works that do not appear streamlined or made of a single piece, but in which a decidedly heterogeneous sound world opens up. And it is precisely these breaks that regularly lead to the “magic moments” in the work mentioned above.

Nevertheless, these breaks in the work not only pose problems for the listeners, but of course also for the musicians and producers. When the violin solo in the Violin Concerto almost falls apart with trepidation around minute 16, then it must be noted that even Thomas Zehetmair cannot manage to create this fragile moment with confidence and confidence. The orchestra also knows these moments; The recordings do not always seem as if the works had been rehearsed to the last detail. And when in the studio you want to bring the many changes between the smallest ensembles and orchestral tutti within the pieces into a harmonious stereo sound image, the desperation is palpable. However, these slight deficiencies in the production are not disturbing, but rather can be heard as a break within Maderna's aesthetic. The imbalances, the imbalances, the disproportions and disproportions are part of his personal style, especially in his late work. Since the late 1960s, the works - seven of the nineteen recorded works - have also had features of an open form, which is often spontaneously assembled by the conductor during the performance. Works that have to be set up and invented anew every time. So you can't speak of a reference or even a definitive recording anyway, but many different recordings are required to really get hold of the pieces. With these five CDs, the HR Symphony Orchestra and NEOS have taken a first and important step in this direction.

Björn Gottstein