Berio: Recital I for Cathy / Folk Songs / 3 Songs by Kurt Weill [Import]

Luciano Berio (Composer), John Jacob Niles (Composer), Kurt Weill (Composer), Luciano Berio (Conductor), Juilliard Ensemble (Performer), Cathy Berberian (Performer), London Sinfonietta (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Juilliard Ensemble, Cathy Berberian
• Orchestra: London Sinfonietta
• Conductor: Luciano Berio
• Composer: Luciano Berio, John Jacob Niles, Kurt Weill
• Audio CD (February 24, 1995)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: RCA Victor Europe
• ASIN: B000003FOS
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,979 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Reciatal I For Cathy: Se I Languidi Miei Sguardi

2. Reciatal I For Cathy: Amor, Dov'e La Fe

3. Recital I For Cathy: 'Ah! He Hadn't Been There Before...'

4. Recital I For Cathy: 'Cl That's The Sound That Has Been Haunting Me...'

5. Recital I For Cathy: Avendo Gran Desio

6. Recital I For Cathy: 'Who Hasn't Taken A Piece Out Of My Life?'

7. Recital I For Cathy: Musician Exchange: 'These 5 Men...'

8. Recital I For Cathy: Exc: Mahler, Delibes, Rossini, Etc

9. Recital I For Cathy: Calmo E Lontano: 'Libera Nos'

10. Folk Songs: Black Is The Colour...

11. Folk Songs: I Wonder As I Wander...

12. Folk Songs: Loosin Yelav...

13. Folk Songs: Rossignolet Du Bois

14. Folk Songs: A La Femminisca

15. Folk Songs: La Donna Ideale

16. Folk Songs: Ballo

17. Folk Songs: Motettu De Tristura

18. Folk Songs: Malurous Qu' O Uno Fenno

19. Folk Songs: Lo Fiolaire

20. Folk Songs: Azerbaijan Love Song

See all 23 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Cathy Berberian, singer and wife of Luciano Berio, was one of music's true originals. Equally adept at Monteverdi and the wildest effusions of the avant-garde, her performances brought her husband's music to new and appreciative audiences, while permitting Berio to create some of his most gripping work at the same time. Folk Songs is exactly what the title says--a collection of folk songs from around the world which gives Berberian the opportunity to demonstrate her ability to sing in different languages and styles. Recital 1 is something else again--a monologue for soprano that reveals the slow disintegration of her personality. It's a nervous breakdown in music. Berberian performs everything on this disc brilliantly. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wide range from an incredible artist, September 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Berio: Recital I for Cathy / Folk Songs / 3 Songs by Kurt Weill (Audio CD)

I'd heard so much about Cathy Berberian that I jumped at the chance to buy this CD. I was particularly interested in what she did with the Folk Songs (since I'd worked on them myself). She is subtler than I expected, but always clear in her interpretation. She has a surprisingly youthful sounding voice, and I suspect she was something of an actress (Recital I)! The range goes from avant garde (Recital I) to show tunes (Kurt Weill), with everything else in between, and she performs all equally well. The reviews sum it up well.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic performance, June 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Berio: Recital I for Cathy / Folk Songs / 3 Songs by Kurt Weill (Audio CD)

"Recital I for Cathy" looks back into music history, quoting from famous operatic and recital pieces, while mainting a modern aesthetic, jumping from singing to speaking. It is schizophrenic and absurd, yet retains a certian homogeneity. A classic work with the famous Cathy Berberian, for whom it was written. The Folk Songs, too, are enjoyable--both recognizable and new.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Berio's singer, October 15, 2007

By 

Marcos Saboya Santos "marcos saboya" (Rio,brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Berio: Recital I for Cathy / Folk Songs / 3 Songs by Kurt Weill (Audio CD)

The more traditional Folk Songs was a display piece for her facility with languages.In this suite those who know Berio as an avant-garde composer ranking with Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen will discover him in an unaccustomedly light mood. Berio made these arrangements as ':a tribute to the extraordinary artistry" of the American singer Cathy Berberian, a specialist in Berio's music whose musicality, intelligence and perhaps unique virtuosity and range of tone color have made her world famous as an interpreter of the most difficult works of the avant-garde.

One cannot really classify either the first song, Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair, or the second, I Wonder As I Wander, as a genuine folk song. In fact, John Jacob Niles, the Kentucky-born singer and scholar, whose education included classes with Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, composed them in Elizabethan modes and made them famous by singing and recording them. Berio's suite opens with a viola, free of bar lines and rhythmically independent of the voice, evoking a country fiddler. Harmonics from the viola, cello and harp contribute toward the "hurdy-gurdy sound" Berio wanted to accompany the second song.

Armenia, the country of Miss Berberian's forebears, provided the third song, Loosin yelav, which describes the rising of the moon. In the old French song Rossignolet du bois, introduced by antique finger cymbals, the nightingale advises an inquiring lover to sing his serenades two hours after mid-night, and identifies the "apples" in his garden as the moon and the sun. A sustained chord colored by the striking of automobile spring coils bridges this song to the next one, the old Sicilian song A la femminisca, sung by fishermen's wives as they wait at the docks. Like the first two songs, the sixth, La Donna ideale, and the seventh, ll Bello, come not from anonymous folk bards but from Berio himself, who wrote them in 1949 at the age of 24 for a Fulbright Fellowship voice student in Italy named Cathy Berberian. The old Genoese-dialect folk poem The Ideal Woman says that if you find a woman at once well-born, well-mannered, well-formed and with a good dowry, for God's sake don't let her get away. The Ball, another old Italian poem, says that the wisest of men lose their heads over love, but love resists the sun and ice and all else. Metettu di tristura comes from Sardinia and apostrophizes the nightingale: "How you resemble me as 'I weep for my lover... When they bury me, sing me this song."

The next two come from perhaps the most famous of all folk-music arrangements, Joseph Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne, in auvergnat dialect. Malurous qu'o uno fenno poses the eternal marital paradox: he with no spouse seeks one, and he with one wishes he had none. A cello echoing the improvisation at the opening of the suite introduces Lo Fialaire, in which a girl at her spinning wheel sings of exchanging kisses with a shepherd.

Miss Berberian discovered the last song, here called simply Azerbaijan Love Song, on a 78-r.p.m. 10-inch disc from the Soviet Asian republic of Azerbaijan, sung in that nation's language except for one verse in Russian, which a Russian-speaking friend told her compared love to a stove. Miss Berberian sung, purely by rote, the sounds she transcribed as best she could from that scratchy old record. She knew not one word of Azerbaijani.