The boundaries of other people

Kate Molleson explores the other people who helped Berio push musical boundaries – friends, teachers and colleagues.

To celebrate the centenary of his birth, Kate Molleson explores the life and music of one of most influential figures in all of modern music – Luciano Berio. Berio’s music is lyrical and expressive, while never ignoring the most advanced techniques and technologies of his time. He worked with many key figures in 20th Century music while always following his own, very individual path, both through life and in his music, where he constantly pushed at and broke the boundaries he encountered. During this week, Kate looks in more depth at some of these limits: the boundaries he was conditioned to recognise in his youth, the boundaries and possibilities of the human voice, the boundaries of other people, the boundary of Europe’s cultural scene, and the boundaries of the musical past and the musical future.

In Wednesday’s episode, Kate Molleson explores the other people who helped Berio push musical boundaries – friends, teachers and colleagues. We’ll discover how Berio claimed he learnt more from his teacher’s musical scores than from the man himself, encounter Berio’s cigar smoking friend and comrade in arms at Italy’s state broadcaster RAI – Bruno Maderna, and learn how another friend - the author Umberto Eco - introduced Berio to James Joyce. Plus, the police are called to intervene at a concert series, and after co-founding Milan’s cutting edge electronics studio and pursuing the possibilities of electronic sound, Berio resigns, and decides to concentrate his energies elsewhere.

Cinque variazioni
Andrea Lucchesini, piano

Calmo (in memorium Bruno Maderna)
Virpi Raisanen, mezzo soprano
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu, conductor

Thema - Omaggio a Joyce
Cathy Berberian, voice
Luciano Berio, tape

Chemins I (su sequenza II) for harp and orchestra
Anna Verkholantseva, harp
Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins, conductor

Folk Songs – Black Is the colour; I wonder as I wander; Rossignolet du bois
Lucile Richardot, singer
Les Cris des Paris
Geoffroy Jourdain, conductor

Produced by Sam Phillips for BBC Audio Wales & West