Uploaded February 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
PSAPPHA ENSEMBLE
Vicci Wardman - viola
Tim Williams - percussion
This performance was streamed live on 12th November 2020 from Hallé St Peter's in Manchester (UK) without an audience. This is a new edit of the original livestream and presented in 4K. To view the 4K version we recommend you use Google Chrome or the Firefox browser.
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There is no real distinction, Berio suggests here, between the natural and the artificial. We, and our most complex imaginings, are all part of nature: naturale. Berio had a particular liking for the viola, to which he devoted not only one of his solo Sequenzas but also two concertos arising from it and a third concerto, Voci (Voices, 1984), based on Sicilian folksongs. Naturale is a derivative of this last piece, composed the next year for a performance by the Italian dance company Aterballetto -- though, as so often with Berio, the theatre is implicit in how the music acts, and the composition creates its own stage.
On this stage, within the echo of a tam-tam stroke, two characters enter: a viola player, live, and a singer, Peppino Celano, heard from recordings. Visible and invisible, these two also come from different cultural worlds: folk music, such as anyone (Sicilian) might sing, and highly determined, highly indivdualized virtuosity – the raw and the cooked. Their relationship is ambiguous. Does the singer challenge the viola player or encourage? Is he the viola’s starting point or its destination? And to which world does the percussionist belong, if to either? As the piece unfolds, we may feel voice and viola coming closer, to a point of crisis.
“My links with folk music are often of an emotional character”, Berio once said. “When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery. I return again and again to folk music because I try to establish contact between that and my own ideas about music. I have a utopian dream, though I know it cannot be realised: I would like to create a unity between folk music and our music – a real, perceptible, understandable conduit between ancient music-making, which is so close to everyday work, and our music.”
About the composer: Luciano Berio
From a position in the post-war avantgarde, Berio embraced – with fondness, fascination and extreme sophistication – a great range of other options, both historical and altogether outside the western classical tradition (from Sicilian folk music to African polyphony). Music for him was a language of gestures in sound, and he used the full resources of his time in musically examining other languages: verbal languages in his many vocal works, languages of non-verbal communication in solo pieces, musical languages of the past (notably those of the concerto) or far away, even the languages of his own earlier works, in elaborations that carry them into new domains.
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Psappha is grateful for the support we receive from funders which enables us to reach a wider audience. With thanks to Arts Council England; PRS Foundation; Foyle Foundation; Granada Foundation; and the RVW Trust.
Please support Psappha's work: psappha.com/support-us
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LEARN MORE AND FOLLOW PSAPPHA
Website: psappha.com
Subscribe to Psappha's Enewsletter: buff.ly/31HjEHV
Twitter: twitter.com/PsapphaEnsemble
Facebook: facebook.com/psappha.ensemble
Instagram: instagram.com/psapphaensemble
FILM PRODUCTION
Rob Kelledy - Sound Recording and Mastering
Soup Collective - Cameras
Tim Williams - Editor and Producer
PSAPPHA ENSEMBLE
Vicci Wardman - viola
Tim Williams - percussion
This performance was streamed live on 12th November 2020 from Hallé St Peter's in Manchester (UK) without an audience. This is a new edit of the original livestream and presented in 4K. To view the 4K version we recommend you use Google Chrome or the Firefox browser.
----
There is no real distinction, Berio suggests here, between the natural and the artificial. We, and our most complex imaginings, are all part of nature: naturale. Berio had a particular liking for the viola, to which he devoted not only one of his solo Sequenzas but also two concertos arising from it and a third concerto, Voci (Voices, 1984), based on Sicilian folksongs. Naturale is a derivative of this last piece, composed the next year for a performance by the Italian dance company Aterballetto -- though, as so often with Berio, the theatre is implicit in how the music acts, and the composition creates its own stage.
On this stage, within the echo of a tam-tam stroke, two characters enter: a viola player, live, and a singer, Peppino Celano, heard from recordings. Visible and invisible, these two also come from different cultural worlds: folk music, such as anyone (Sicilian) might sing, and highly determined, highly indivdualized virtuosity – the raw and the cooked. Their relationship is ambiguous. Does the singer challenge the viola player or encourage? Is he the viola’s starting point or its destination? And to which world does the percussionist belong, if to either? As the piece unfolds, we may feel voice and viola coming closer, to a point of crisis.
“My links with folk music are often of an emotional character”, Berio once said. “When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery. I return again and again to folk music because I try to establish contact between that and my own ideas about music. I have a utopian dream, though I know it cannot be realised: I would like to create a unity between folk music and our music – a real, perceptible, understandable conduit between ancient music-making, which is so close to everyday work, and our music.”
About the composer: Luciano Berio
From a position in the post-war avantgarde, Berio embraced – with fondness, fascination and extreme sophistication – a great range of other options, both historical and altogether outside the western classical tradition (from Sicilian folk music to African polyphony). Music for him was a language of gestures in sound, and he used the full resources of his time in musically examining other languages: verbal languages in his many vocal works, languages of non-verbal communication in solo pieces, musical languages of the past (notably those of the concerto) or far away, even the languages of his own earlier works, in elaborations that carry them into new domains.
-----
Psappha is grateful for the support we receive from funders which enables us to reach a wider audience. With thanks to Arts Council England; PRS Foundation; Foyle Foundation; Granada Foundation; and the RVW Trust.
Please support Psappha's work: psappha.com/support-us
-----
LEARN MORE AND FOLLOW PSAPPHA
Website: psappha.com
Subscribe to Psappha's Enewsletter: buff.ly/31HjEHV
Twitter: twitter.com/PsapphaEnsemble
Facebook: facebook.com/psappha.ensemble
Instagram: instagram.com/psapphaensemble
FILM PRODUCTION
Rob Kelledy - Sound Recording and Mastering
Soup Collective - Cameras
Tim Williams - Editor and Producer
