Bruno Maderna - Complete Works for Orchestra Vol.4

Bruno MADERNA (1920-1973)

Complete Works for Orchestra Vol.4

quadrivium, for four percussionists and four orchestra groups (1969)*

Aura, for orchestra (1972)

Amanda, for chamber orchestra (1966)**

Giardino religious, for small orchestra (1972)

Percussion:*

Konrad Graf

Andrew Hepp

Burkhard Roggenbruck

Andreas Boettger

Alejandro Rutkauskas (violin)**

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra

Arturo Tamayo

Bruno Maderna Orchestral Works Vol. 4

quadrivium opens Maderna's final creative period in 1969, which is characterized by impressive and idiosyncratic works in a large symphonic instrumentation: »The title is perhaps somewhat literary. I was thinking of the four ›liberal arts‹ of the Middle Ages: arithmetic, algebra, music and astronomy [...] Added to that is the number Four has a magical effect: the four elements, the four ages of the earth […]«. Accordingly, he uses “four solo percussion instruments and a large orchestra divided into four groups, into four mixed instrument families […] The orchestra is an extension of the percussion.

The work glides from informality to precision, from sheer virtuosity to the simplest, most intimate lyricism. The organization, the structure is cube-shaped. Sometimes the polished surfaces transform into a single block, sometimes they separate and show different facets. In doing so, one changes from the strict musical notation to an open form. Three or four places, including the end, show the asymmetrical conception of the quadrivium. The informal places are laden with a great many 'opportunities'. One of those ways is to return to the closed form.«

As in almost all late compositions, strictly composed sections alternate with aleatoric passages. The conductor is given far-reaching freedom of decision regarding the design of the aleatoric, which means that the music that is heard can take on very different forms. One would have to listen to many different recordings of one and the same late Maderna work in order to get an impression of the variety of possibilities that each have a strongly changing effect on the overall impression.

quadrivium is articulated in six sections, three of which are orchestral movements, two 'cadenzas' and one a solo quartet. These episodes are markedly contrasting in expression, timbre, tempo and dynamics. The numerous percussion instruments are distributed across the four orchestral groups as their respective centres. The alternation and overlapping of different timbres lend quadrivium a very special charm, and some connoisseurs consider this composition, which was premiered on April 4, 1969 in Royan, to be the pinnacle of Maderna's output.

The compositional procedures in Aura, Garden of religion and Amanda resemble those in quadrivium. Aura was commissioned to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which premiered on March 23, 1972 in Chicago under Maderna's baton. The 54 participating strings are divided into six groups, while the horns and percussion, often used in punctuation, function as a single group.

Here it is very difficult for the listener to distinguish aleatoric passages from those of a firmly prescribed structure, as the diverging sound sources are subjected to a process of amalgamation, their voices becoming entangled and creating moods ranging from tenderness and poetry to stormy outbursts.

Aura is characterized by violent contrasts (e.g. the nostalgic expressiveness of the strings, reminiscent of Alban Berg, in the interplay with the eruptive violence of the brass) and, in the composer’s integrative world view, should be a kind of sounding mirror of the reality of life in all its simultaneous complexity and contradictions . According to Paolo Petazzi, "Aura impressively traces a process that gradually leads from the slow crystallization of the opening episode to the resolution in the final part".

Amanda, according to Maderna "a kind of serenade", was written in 1966 and premiered on October 25, 1966 in Naples. Among the works compiled in Volume 4, it is the most uninhibited, cheerful, and also most lyrical composition. Apart from a few percussion instruments, the chamber ensemble consists exclusively of stringed instruments, including mandolin and guitar. In Amanda fragments from Maderna's earlier works emerge as Stela per Diotima on, and it should then turn in violin concerto from 1969, which some see as the culmination of the 1960s Amanda resurrect in a new environment.

Garden of religion, composed in 1972, first presented to an audience in Tanglewood on August 8, 1972 and subsequently recorded for Columbia, was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation. Maderna had visited the American patron Paul Fromm and admired the idyll of his magnificent gardens. The working title of the work was initially Fromm's Garden, but Maderna knew how to make the dedication only recognizable to insiders in a very elegant way, by translating the German word ›fromm‹ into Italian, thus giving the archaic title Garden of religion came about.

This work uses a smaller orchestra than its predecessors quadrivium or Aura. The conductor moves between the different orchestral groups as if they were describing different paths in a garden. A lot of room is left to free improvisation, of course with the inclusion of numerous detailed instructions from the composer, such as at the beginning that this is "like the awakening of small birds", later: "at the climax the conductor is free to add timpani and wind instruments, if he so wishes', or towards the end: 'the conductor is free to improvise with the trumpets and the double bass'.

Christopher Schlüren

(using introductory text by Angela Ida De Benedictis)

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Gramophone review: 

Whether by luck or design I can’t say, but the fourth volume of Arturo Tamayo’s cycle-in-progress of Bruno Maderna’s complete orchestral works contains four pieces, one of which, Quadrivium (1969) – for four percussionists and four orchestral groups – deals with what Maderna termed the ‘magical effect’ of the number four. Quadrivium was also the main feature on Giuseppe Sinopoli’s highly regarded 1979 DG recording of Maderna orchestral works alongside Aura (1972), also documented here. Every Maderna aficionado remains grateful for Sinopoli’s efforts but this latest instalment from Neos confirms my hunch that, note-for-note, Tamayo’s Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra is more at ease with Maderna’s demands than were Sinopoli’s North German Radio SO.

How to deal with his notation – that’s the primary challenge these late-period scores throw up. Each work involves a degree of controlled improvisation, with Maderna embedding pockets of aleatoric commentary inside his formal structures. Giardino religioso (1972) has been recorded at least twice before – by Gunther Schuller (Columbia) and Hans Zender (Col Legno) – but Tamayo makes most of Maderna’s neat premise. The conductor walks through the orchestra, as if he’s navigating pathways through the secret garden Maderna invokes in his title. If nothing different happened in sound there would be little point in going to such extremes; but Tamayo creates an illusion of three-dimensional sound – textures turning corners to meet each other, abrupt blasts of blaring brass that disappear the instant your back is turned.

Amanda (1966) is an unusually low-key work, light on its pins and lyrical; and, as previously trailed, Quadrivium and Aura receive exemplary performances, in the first work Tamayo depicting cogently Maderna’s role-reversal plan that the orchestra should be colouring the percussion. In Sinopoli’s account the acoustic and gestural balance between percussion and orchestra felt overly run-of-the-mill.