events

Umberto Eco has left us. Under media spotlights by now dimmed, the Centro Studi Luciano Berio wishes to remember this great protagonist of international culture by recalling the principal stages of the long personal and professional journey that tied him to Luciano Berio.
The friendship between Umberto Eco and Luciano Berio began at the outset of the 1950s, when both worked for the Milanese headquarters of RAI on the Corso Sempione. The years immediately preceding and succeeding the foundation of the Studio di Fonologia were, on the creative and personal levels, significant for both: indeed it was to Berio, and to the research conducted in those years in the environment of the Milanese electronic studio, that Eco owed his acquaintance with the Cours de linguistique générale by Saussure and with Principes de phonologie by Troubetzkoy, volumes «borrowed from the Studio di Fonologia, and which naturally I [Eco] have never returned through right of conquest.» It was again in the milieu of the electronic studio that ever new commonalities of life and work were established, ones that extended also to Roberto Leydi and Cathy Berberian.

"... in one way or another, I always carry him within myself."

© Marion Kalter

The concerts featuring Luciano Berio’s music continue during the last month of Summer and Autumn 2015. Here follows a selection of the most outstanding events (for a complete list, see the Concert calendar).

In the frame of Divertimento Ensemble’s season Rondò 2015 in Monferrato are scheduled two concerts with works by Berio: on September 5 Lorna Windsor and Maria Grazia Bellocchio will perform La donna ideale and Ballo from Quattro Canzoni Popolari; on September 9 Luca Avanzi will perform Sequenza VII for oboe.
A-ronne is scheduled in Zurich on September 18, featuring the ensemble SoloVoices.
The Milano Musica festival will include three concerts with Berio’s music: on October 12 Linea and Six Encores will be performed by the soloists and ensemble of the contemporary music lab of the Conservatorio “G. Verdi”, Milan; on October 30 Cries of London will be performed by The Company of Music conducted by Johannes Hiemetsberger; on November 14 is scheduled the performance of Quartetto and Sincronie featuring the Arditti String Quartet.
The choreography Workwithinwork by William Forsythe, based on Berio’s Duetti per due violini, is scheduled in Düsseldorf from October 10 to December 25, featuring the Ballett am Rhein and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker.

The concert calendar featuring Berio’s works is rich of events scheduled between the end of 2015 and the first months of 2016. Here follows a selection of the most outstanding concerts (for a complete list, see the Concert calendar).

From January 27 to February 1st the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, will schedule a series of events devoted to Luciano Berio's music. The initiative includes conferences, screenings and concerts, among which two performances of Sinfonia with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra and members of the Curtis Opera Theatre conducted by Ludovic Morlot (January 31, KimmelI Centre for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, and February 1st, Carnegie Hall, New York). For more information, click here.

May 2015, which marks the twelfth anniversary of Luciano Berio’s passing (27 May 2003), features many events, especially for Berio’s musical theatre.
Passaggio, conceived in collaboration with Edoardo Sanguineti, is performed in the frame of Festival Acht Brücken, Cologne, with soprano Julia Henning, the Kölner Vokalsolisten and the Ensemble intercontemporain, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado (May 9).
Seven performances of Un re in ascolto, the “azione musicale” realized from the sodality between Berio and Italo Calvino, are scheduled at Staatstheater Kassel, with Alexander Hannemann as conductor and Paul Esterhazy as stage director (May 23-July 25).
Sinfonia is performed at the Maison de Radio France by Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Pascal Rophé (May 23). SOLO is performed in Munich by Christian Lindberg and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, conducted by Zubin Mehta (June 1 and 2).
Recital for Cathy is scheduled in Ghent (June 5) and Düsseldorf (June 7), with Elisa Caluwaerts and the Spectra Ensemble, conducted by Mark-Andreas Schlingenspiepen.
The Sechs Frühe Lieder and Fünf Frühe Lieder by Mahler-Berio will be performed at Opera di Firenze featuring baritone Dietrich Henschel and the Orchestra Haydn, conducted by Arvo Volmer (June 6).
Via Luciano Berio in Milan was the venue for an open-air concert in the frame of the PianoCity festival (22-24 May 2015), an event that brought piano music to symbolic spots around Milan.

For the complete list of concerts with Berio’s music, see the Concert calendar.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot with the third act completed by Luciano Berio in 2001 was performed at the La Scala theatre on May 1st to mark the opening of the world fair «Expo Milano 2015».
The opera features an exceptional cast conducted by Riccardo Chailly and stage directed by with Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Seven more performances follow on May 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 20 and 23.

We wish to mark this extraordinary event with a collection of documents and interviews given by Luciano Berio between 2001 and 2002, in which the composer describes and explains the genesis and the conception of his rewriting of Turandot’s finale. The documents include a facsimile selection of autograph manuscripts and a link to an audio file of Berio’s finale recorded in 2003 for Decca with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly.

For the documents on Berio’s completion of Turandot click here.

L. Berio, Turandot, page 3 of the autograph score (by courtesy of Paul Sacher Stiftung and the Berio Estate).

Cover of the Sunday Calendar supplement of the «Los Angeles Times», 26 May 2002, featuring an image from the world première of Turandot with Luciano Berio's Finale.
For the documents on Berio’s completion of Turandot click here.

Mark Weir, a true friend and member of our team, passed away prematurely on Friday 2 October. Mark was a key figure of the Centro Studi Luciano Berio since its foundation in 2009 working ‘backstage’ for the English section of our website, translating and editing news, newsletters and documents. We wish to pay homage to his impeccable métier, to his human generosity, his love for music, and to thank him for his enthusiastic participation in the Centro Studi’s life and activities. We share the grief of Andrea Milanesi and of all of those who have known and loved Mark.