Norman LebrechtвЂ™s new book Genius and AnxietyВ is available now. To read more from Norman Lebrecht, follow him on. Some of the closing dissonances could soothe anyone to sleep. Grete Pedersen conducts the Norwegian soloists choir and radio orchestra with unassuming precision and magnificent flair. In BerioвЂ™s crafted concept, it turns into a haunting whole. In feebler hands, it might have drifted off into nothingness. It is also overtly political, referring both to Italian chaos and revolution in Chile.Д¬ries of LondonВ is the sort of thing you might have encountered at the Edinburgh Fringe in the 1980s, a pack of singers messing about with fragments of words and musical phrases. This is peak-period Berio, before he lost his mojo and succumbed into writing pastiche Schubert. ItвЂ™s wonderfully challenging to all our musical preconceptions and frequently beautiful beyond words. It is a montage of street songs, madrigals, verses by Pablo Neuruda and snatches of colloquialism, built upon a large orchestral foundation - 84 instruments - of pure ascetic modernism. Coro developed out of Cries of London, written for the KingвЂ™s Singers in 1973-74.

Since weвЂ™re unlikely in the next few years to hear another live performance of BerioвЂ™s massive Sinfonia - his collage tribute to MahlerвЂ™s second symphony - weвЂ™ll have to make do with the works that followed it. Luciano Berio: Coro & Cries of London (Bis)

Berio cries of london pdf