Maderna: Serenata Per Un Satellite / Contempoartsensemble

The score for Serenade for a Satellite bears a dedication to Umberto Montalenti, then director of the European Space Operation Center in Darmstadt, where on the night of October 1, 1969, the satellite ERSO 1 B ìBoreasî was launched and, at the same time, the first performance of the Serenata was given. The music moves as in a sort of ìguided improvisationî and even the indication of the seven instruments in the original score represents an element of flexibility. The musical material is mainly ìopenî and the performers are free to choose which fragments to play among the ones written in the score. Maderna, however, directs the conductor through a series of significant instruments of control over the performance, with which he insures both Read more continuity between the various fragments played and a formal logic for the entire event. In an interview given on April 5, 1933 (El Sol, Madrid), Federico Garcia Lorca talked about a new play, based on music like a chamber opera: Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin; the world premiere was to include not only some Scarlatti intermezzos but even an alternation of the sounds and the words, musical interruption of the dialogues. The text, almost a libretto, seemed ready to be set to music. In 1961, however, when Bruno Maderna prepared his ìradio adaptionî (Don Perlimplin was created as a radio play, first broadcast by the RAI in August, 1962), he went beyond the original theatrical work; not only did he create but he radicalized its musical tendencies. The composer used modern means of acoustic communication to create a new form of listening theater. Don Perlimplin is a masterpiece of the Neue Musik in which the composer encapsulates the craftsman experience of the Fifties, not only by reusing pre-existent works: with great liberty he is able to use the modules of construction of the Darmstadt School as well as the electronic means with which he involved himself in the Studio of Musical Phonology in Milan. His first ìschoolî of music, however, was his fatherís dance bands around Venice, and Maderna can never hide a certain delight in trite melody. All of this is a part of his sound imagination and Don Perlimplin pays witness, succeeding in integrating the most varied of elements without levelling them. There are jazz allusions, especially about Belisa, there is the rigidity of compositional structuralism and sensitivity to timbre (Maderna distinguishes four instrumental groups); there is electronics with its alienating effects, which opose the tradition of sound and thus prepare the way for the triumph of imagination. The dreamlike atmosphere, the sound aura are also due to the varied modes of elaboration, of electronic transformation (it is no chance that parts of the original tape are found again in other important works up to his last opera Satyricon). Don Perlimplin holds a vast gamma of expression; artistic lightness, sweet sound and pleasant listening survive amidst the avant-gardism of the post-war years. Read less

1. Serenata per un satellite by Bruno Maderna

Conductor: Mauro Ceccanti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Contempoartensemble
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1969; Italy
Date of Recording: 07/2002
Venue: Siena, Italy
Length: 7 Minutes 47 Secs.

2. Don Perlimplin by Bruno Maderna

Performer: Marion D'Amburgo (Spoken Vocals), Alda Dalle Lucche (Saxophone), Sandro Tani (Saxophone),
Sonia Bergamasco (Spoken Vocals), Marco Vanni (Saxophone), Lucia Danesi (Saxophone),
Roberto Fabbriciani (Flute)
Conductor: Mauro Ceccanti
Orchestra/Ensemble: Contempoartensemble
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1962; Italy
Date of Recording: 07/2002
Venue: Live Siena, Italy
Length: 47 Minutes 4 Secs.

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Maderna: Serenata Per Un Satellite / Contempoartsensemble

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