NEWS

On 10 and 11 March 2023, the Fondazione Roma Tre Teatro Palladium - Auditorium Parco della Musica hosted Luciano Berio e la multimedialità (Luciano Berio and multimedia), a meeting consisting of a didactic seminar, video projections and study day, curated by Angela Ida De Benedictis and Federica Di Gasbarro.

The expansion of the boundaries of musical language through the interaction between old and new media and the broadening of the means of transmission of the sound message represented an unceasing challenge in the career of Luciano Berio (1925-2003).
His encounter with new media dates back to the first half of the 1950s and reached its first important stage with the founding, together with Bruno Maderna, of the Studio di Fonologia Musicale in Milan at RAI, one of the first electronic music laboratories in Europe. In this Studio, Berio experimented with new forms of interaction between instrumental, vocal and electronic music.
In the 1970s, Berio ventured into the multimedia medium par excellence, television. The cycle of broadcasts C'è musica e musica, first aired on RAI in 1972, stands out as a unicum in the television landscape of the time and makes TV an instrument of high dissemination of international musical culture, destined to broaden the sound horizons and knowledge of Italian television viewers.

From the 27th to the 29th of May, 2022, Radicondoli (Province of Siena, Italy) hosted a weekend dedicated to Luciano Berio and his profound bond with the Tuscan village he chose in the 1970s as his favourite place of the heart, in which to work and spend time with his family and closest friends.
The event, entitled “Suoni e occasioni: Radicondoli ricorda Luciano Berio" (Sounds and occasions: Radicondoli remembers Luciano Berio), is organised by Radicondoli Arte in collaboration with the Centro Studi Luciano Berio and the Radiconvento Music School (Dulcimer Fondation pour la musique). The program aims to celebrate the Maestro (as he is still called by the residents of the village), through the sharing of memories and testimonies of the people who knew him and were part of his life.
The weekend consisted of audiovisual projections, an exhibition of archival material, meetings with the public, musical performances and a concert by the mdi ensemble with works by Berio and readings of his texts. The throughline of all these events was the concept of "occasion," as defined with multiple meanings and retraced through the artistic and personal biography of Luciano Berio.

To underline the relationship between Berio and Radicondoli, we have collected extracts from texts and interviews where the composer talks about this special affection on this page.

Some photos of the meeting with the public, held on 28 May at the Teatro dei Risorti in Radicondoli, are collected here.

Bruno Maderna © Gisela Bauknecht [Sammlung Bruno Maderna, Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel]

The elegant box featuring the nine Chemins by Luciano Berio was released by Sebastian Solte's label Bastille Musique. Composed between 1965 and 1996 as a sort of "citation, translation, expansion and transcription of the Sequenzas for solo instrument" – to paraphrase the words of the composer – these Chemins are also the best analyzes of the Sequenzas.
The double CD, accompanied by the program notes and a beautiful iconographic set, includes the live recording of the six concerts featuring the WDR Symphony Orchestra which were held between 2016 and 2017 in Cologne, in the frame of the cycle "Musik der Zeit": seven conductors and seven soloists participated in this ambitious project, which includes the world premiere recording of Chemins IIc.
For the disc review, read here.