You could plausibly call this the "new simplicity" era in music. Górecki, Pärt, and Tavener have it over Boulez and Stockhausen. Complexity is out, mysticism is in. Irony’s stock is down, sincerity’s is up. Serialism is bad, a sort of quasi-tonality is good. Make it plain, we tell composers, and make sure you mean it.
And those of you who miss the good old days of density, freewheeling experimentation, collage, and pastiche? Your trip down memory lane awaits you next week at Symphony Hall, when the Boston Symphony offers a rare performance of Luciano Berio’s most famous work, Sinfonia.
Written in 1969, the piece is one of the most astonishing meetings of past and present ever concocted. Berio returned to the original meaning of the word Sinfonia — "a sounding together — and made a complex stew from whatever musical and cultural ingredients he had at hand. The sounds that he brought together range from dense clusters of instrumental tone to quotations that span almost the entire history of music to that time. And for the eight solo voices, Berio forges together bits and scraps of texts from the most disparate sources imaginable. The first movement interlaces bursts of sound from the orchestra with quotations from the writings of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss on Brazilian myths concerning the origin of water. The second movement sets eerie clouds of sound as the background for a meditation on the words "Martin Luther King."
But the work’s real notoriety rests mainly on its third movement, a tribute to Gustav Mahler, "whose music," in the composer’s words, "seems to carry all the weight of the last two centuries of musical history." The scherzo of Mahler’s Second Symphony is the backdrop for an astonishing collage of musical references that run from Bach to Boulez, all jostling in haphazardly on Mahler’s calmly flowing music. Against this the singers deliver quotations from Joyce and Beckett, slogans from student protests, fragments of German speech, ludicrous clichés about classical music, and so much more. Some of it is funny ("Thank you, Mr. Boulez!"), some of it is grim (Beckett’s "You can’t leave, you’re afraid to leave, you make the best of it"), but it’s all driven on by a speaker’s insistent command to "keep going!" And keep going it does, for about 12 minutes of chaos. The piece was dedicated to inveterate Mahler lover Leonard Bernstein; one wonders what he thought of Berio’s "tribute."
If this description makes Sinfonia sound like mere postmodern pastiche, it’s nonetheless a very serious piece. The references to King’s murder and the 1968 student uprisings in France must have touched still-open wounds when the work premiered. And for all the madness of the third movement, the way it sets familiar strands of music in a wholly new light simply by yoking them together remains most impressive.
It will be fascinating to see whether Sinfonia now comes off as the pathbreaking work it was or as dated kitsch. Either way, we’re fortunate in having the opportunity to find out. The young, immensely talented American conductor David Robertson will be on the podium, and the vocal group Synergy will make its BSO debut. Joining Berio on the program will be Debussy’s transparent ballet score Jeux and the suite from Stravinsky’s Firebird. Performances are March 20, 22, and 25 at 8 p.m. and March 21 at 1:30 p.m. at Symphony Hall. Tickets are $25-$90; call (617) 266-1200.
ALSO UPCOMING: Peter Serkin is sort of the American answer to Maurizio Pollini, an untraditional virtuoso whose strengths are intellect, breadth, and an ability to cut directly to the essence of a complex score. His two passions seem to be contemporary music and Bach, and it’s the latter that’s the focus of his visit to Symphony Hall next Friday. Serkin and the Brandenburg Ensemble offer performances of three piano concertos (BWV 1053, 1054, and 1057) plus Brandenburg No. 3 and the Concerto in A minor for Flute, Violin, Keyboard, and Strings (BWV 1044). That’s March 21 at 8, with Jaime Laredo conducting. Tickets are $35-$58; call (617) 482-6661. And the Belcea Quartet, another talented young foursome, hits these shores for a performance at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 23 at 1:30 p.m. It brings an interesting program: one of Mozart’s Haydn quartets, very early Schubert, and the North American premiere of a work by the Belarussian composer Tatjana Komarova. Tickets are $18 and can be had by calling (866) 468-7619.
