Customer Reviews

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

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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.

"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.

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.

This RCA disc contains several pieces marvellously performed by the modernist diva Cathy Berberian. Married to Luciano Berio for several years, and long afterward his muse, Berberian brought not only an impeccable voice to the performance of many pieces, but an enthralling stage personality. There's some Kurt Weill on here too, but my review will be limited to the Berio since I bought the disc in exploring his output.

Berio's "Recital I for Cathy" for female voice and 17 instruments (1972) is a highly theatrical work from a composer who loved to mash up modernism and the classical canon and make a scandalous spectacle of it. The soprano begins by beautifully singing an aria by Monteverdi. But in a few minutes, she's abandoned this straightforward performance and begins speaking stream-of-consciousness dialogue, complaining that her pianist is late and other such fears of the performer. The ensemble dissolves into fractured modernist lines, with random quotations from the classical period, big band jazz and even earlier Berio sometimes popping up.

The "Recital I for Cathy" could have never reached a wide audience, for few listeners have the requisite knowledge of bel canto *and* a love of postmodern zaniness. But the work has also dated badly, and while I find this fun enough on an initial listening, it doesn't really have much attraction afterward. Certainly Berio's similar piece "Sinfonia" has shown much more staying power. It's frustrating, for perhaps seeing Berberian perform this live back in the day would have been an amazing experience, but in accessing this piece through recording I cannot be too positive about it.

"Folk Songs" (1964) is a cycle of 11 arrangements Berio made from a wide variety of folk traditions. It opens with "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair", whose status as a real folk song is dubious, but then precedes through France, Armenia, Italy, Sardinia and elsewhere. It ends with an Azerbaijani love song that Berberian transcribed herself from an old record, though she didn't understand a word of Azeri. Generally, "Folk Songs" is my least favourite work by Berio, as it's quite tame when the composer could do some amazing things when he let his modernism flow freely. Now, there is a video floating around where Berio leads a Swiss ensemble as Berberian sings, and it's clear that her unique stage presence can save the piece. However, I have no desire to hear this again on recording, or sit through any more concert performances by contemporary sopranos who just don't have the mojo.

I'd recommend this disc only for Berio completists, really, though I understand that Berberian has her own little following regardless of what exactly she was actually singing.

I have the Sarah Walker recording of Berio's Folksongs, but I wanted to hear Berberian's interpretation, as the songs were arranged for her. What a shock: terribly annoying voice, intrusive accent in the English numbers, embarrassing pronunciation of Italian and Russian, and shallow, formulaic over-acting. Berberian fans would do well to check out Sarah Walker: gorgeous voice, careful and elegant pronunciation, exquisite phrasing -- and, in dramatic numbers, powerful acting. In addition, for all those who appreciate Berio, Henze, and other "modern" music composers, Walker has done her share, not only Berio and Henze, but also Maw, Tippett, Taverner -- and the older composers from Monteverdi through Wagner (she has the best hoy-yo-to-jo of them all.)