The pianist in the renowned Norwegian Cikada Ensemble – Kenneth Karlsson – who also is the leader of the ensemble, has released a solo piano album with the music of three main forces in Italian 20th century music; Giacinto Scelsi (1905 – 1988), Luciano Berio (1925) and Luigi Nono (1924 – 1990). These composers may be known for different reasons, but all of them have had an enormous impact.

Scelsi wasn’t widely appreciated until sometime in the 1980s or even 1990s, when his pieces were recorded and spread over the world by companies like Accord and Hat Art, and by their very nature those works weren’t so easily accessible to the ordinary listener. Scelsi’s micro intervals and long, seemingly monotonous pieces, stubbornly clinging to one thought until it was thought out, made the audience, if there was one, desperate. This way of composing was invented by Scelsi while in recluse at a mental institution in Italy, following a serious breakdown. Some of Scelsi’s earlier pieces, some of which were written for piano, are more readily accessible even unto the untrained ear, but they might not be as interesting as later compositions, where Scelsi’s intent all the while was to explore the sound itself; to venture into the core of the sound, to stay on one note and let it ring until something was discovered about the nature of the sound of that note. Scelsi would sit for hours in the mental institution, hitting one key on the piano over and over, listening intensely. Interestingly, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy (leaning heavily on the thoughts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and others) foresaw such a music already back in the 1920s, when he said that “future development of music will move towards spiritualisation and implies recognizing the special character of individual sound. If we immerse ourselves in sound, it reveals three, four, five sounds or more; a single sound unfurls into melody and harmony leading directly to the spiritual world.” It’s hard to describe Scelsi’s music better or more accurate than that.

To Scelsi, each sound is a living organism, with a complex and subtle organic life. I have met the same thoughts in a latter day pianist from Sweden, The Ukraine and Canada – Lubomyr Melnyk – who in his music – which he calls “continuos music” – demonstrates the same sonic philosophy, through different musical solutions, wherein glittering cascades of clustering tones serve the same purpose as Scelsi’s monotonous micro interval compositions.

Luciano Berio has indulged himself in a variety of compositional and musical genres, but always with heart and soul. He was one of the pioneers of electronic music, with pieces like “Thema – Omaggio a Joyce” (1958), “Momenti” (1960), and “Visage” (1961); wonderfully creative pieces, still very exciting and rewarding to listen to these days. Maybe Berio has become mostly known for his series of solo pieces for a number of instruments; “Sequenzas”. In these pieces Berio wanted the soloist to expand the boundaries, which by tradition was forced on the particular instrument, which also included the human voice. The voice was very important in Berio’s output, and he composed extensively for it. Some larger works for voice and orchestra are “Laborintus 2” (1963 – 1965 and “Coro” (1975 – 1977). One of the most compelling large works for voice is “Sinfonia”, composed for the 125th Anniversary of the New York Philharmonic, in which Berio utilizes philosophical texts by Claude Lévi-Strauss on Brazilian myths of the origin of water, the permutated fragments of the name Martin Luther King and fragments from Samuel Beckett’s “The Unnamable”. One of the most solid ensemble or orchestral pieces is the forceful “Eindrücke”.

Luigi Nono has also spread his energies far and wide, but he always has the clear cut, the razor-sharp edge. Even Nono experimented with electronics early, demonstrated by his “Ommagio a Vedova” (1960), which is a splendid electronic composition, given the machinery accessible to studios in those days. “Non Consumiame Marx” (1968 – 1969) utilizes slogans written on the walls of Paris in May of 1968, the year of the youthful revolution, that almost changed appearance into a real revolution. Other pieces from the same time – very different from the Marx bit, was “Un Volto, e del Mare” (1969) with texts by Cesare Pavese. Luigi Nono’s political fury didn’t start with the May revolution of France and Germany in 1968, but much earlier. As early as 1956 Nono composed his “Il canto sospeso”, based on letters from political prisoners on Death Row. Much later (1988 – 1989) he composed the beautiful “La lontananza nostalgica futura, a Madrigal for a Few Travelers” for solo violin, eight tapes and ten music stands, where Gidon Kremer and Sofia Gubaidulina assisted with the tape preparations. Sofia Gubaidulina herself experimented with electronic music in Russia as early as 1970 with the legendary Russian-made ANS synthesizer, in pieces like, for example, “Vivente – Non Vivente”, later issued on Artemiy Artemiev’s Moscow label Electroshock as part of the compilation CD “Electroshock Presents: Electroacoustic Music Volume IV; Archive Tapes; Synthesizer ANS 1964 – 1971”, probably constituting the only CD with Russian electronic music from the Bresjnev era! Sadly, the CD was printed in only 500 copies, and is sold out, now constituting a collector’s item of high value!

Luigi Nono’s works after 1979, starting with his string quartet “Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima”, aims at shaping a new sound world, in which the unknown, the unheard, manifests itself. Using the machinery at the Heinrich Strobel Foundation’s Experimental Studio in Freiburg, Nono decidedly applied the property of movement to the sound. This is the case with, for example, “A Pierre, dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum, a più cori” for contrabass flute in G, contrabass clarinet in Bb and live electronics (1985, where the sound is comprised of an uninterrupted stream of notes and sonorities of long duration, evoking the impression of the entire sound complex as an aura. His most important work in later years is “Prometeo”, and some of the extraordinary by-products of that work, like “A Carlo Scarpa architetto, ai suoi infiniti possibli”.

Kenneth Karlsson begins his CD “Sofferte Onde Serene” with Giacinto Scelsi’s pieces “Quattro illustrazione” (1953) and “Suite 10 – Ka” (1953). “Quattro illustrazione” are inspired by the metamorphoses of Vishnu, his “avatàras”.

Movement 1: “shésha-shàyi Vishnu - Vishnu, like a sleeping universe; Sarasvati playing his sitar”.
Movement 2: “varaha-avatàra – Vishnu, like an angry wild boar, ravaging the world”.
Movement 3: “rama-avatàra – Vishnu incarnated as Rama, the perfect human”.
Movement 4: “krishna-avatàra – Vishnu manifests himself God Almighty”.

The sound of the piano here is mighty, sometimes thunderous, while at other times soft and thoughtful, but the texture never borders on the monotonous micro-interval music of Scelsi’s somewhat later years. The playing is magnificent, and one can easily hear that much care has gone into the process of interpretation as well as into the recording process. Most likely much care has gone into the choice of location, too, since the sound is so brilliant. The CD has been recorded at NRK; the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, except the last piece, which is a live performance. Sometimes – often – these days, the music on CDs are disturbed by either ventilation systems or trucks passing by the studio, but here we only hear Kenneth Karlsson’s magnificent interpretations!

Scelsi’s “Suite No. 10” - “Ka” – follows next. It starts off with careful, anticipating steps in a spiral staircase, like a child’s doll in a fairytale. Soon enough bass tones blend in, deepening the impression, letting on that there is something lurking here, not completely benign. The suite consists of seven movements – altogether about twenty minutes. These twenty minutes are measured in a pointillistic way by Karlsson’s clean touch, and the suspension between tones is hovering, transparent, making this a very exciting piece to dwell in. The sound is outrageously good, close, clear! The playing is meticulous!
I’ve heard “Ka” with the divinely gifted pianist Marianne Schroeder, on a CD from Hat Art, but Kenneth Karlsson’s recording is no less interesting, though Schroeder plays on the Rolls Royce of pianos, a Bösendorfer Imperial. (To hear how an extended Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano in just intonation can sound at its very best; check out LaMonte Young’s recording of his own “the Well-Tuned Piano”, released in a five-CD-box on Gramavision, or Terry Riley’s “Harp of New Albion”, on a two-CD-set from Celestial Harmonies, dedicated to LaMonte Young. Marvelous; a world unto itself!). Another interesting recording of piano works by Giacinto Scelsi is the La Musica issue of “Dodici Preludi”, “Poemi” and “Variazione e Fuga” with the Italian pianist Giuseppe Scotese. This was issued on a CD accompanying the magazine La Musica no. 17, with the record number LM88-2, probably impossible to get these days…
“Ka” means “essence”. Scelsi often names his pieces kind of spooky, but we like it!

Third entry on Kenneth Karlsson’s solo piano CD is Luciano Berio’s “Cinque variazione” for piano (1953). It has a very lyrical, almost impressionistic, Debussy-like halo about its beginning. Quite soon the lyrical feel gives room for a more erratic behavior, and the adventure is on.
Karlsson continues with more Berio; “Sequenza IV” for piano (1966). The presentation of the piece is a number of chords in rapid figures, making a nervous, erratic impression; a little violent, like a drunk teenager veering his arms around, and whom you’d prefer not to be around, unless you can constrain him. This is probably strenuous music for someone unfamiliar with modern pianism, but if you’re in the groove and do not want to relax, this is for you! Further into this piece rippling chains of pearls well forth, making for a more pleasurable listening as well.

Karlsson finishes his Berio part with two shorter entries; “Brin” (1990) and “Rounds” (1963). “Brin” is a very short, softly moving bagatelle, like a fondling summer breeze catching your hair. “Rounds” is full of violent contrasts, kind of typical of the time when it was written, and maybe too much a child of those circumstances. Berio has even a notation in the score, that it should be played nervously!

The concluding piece, the fourteen and a half minute long “Sofferte Onde Serene” (1976) by Luigi Nono, is a rich, varied and a bit ominous piece right from the beginning, with deep murmurs and shrill high notes blending in with each other, giving the impression of electronically processed sounds, and that is, in a way, the case. The recording does involve a tape, placed so that it is giving the illusion of sounds coming from the piano. The tape consists entirely of piano sounds. Nono got his inspiration for the first part of this work from all the bells he could hear from his terrace in Guidecca, from boats, churches etcetera.

This is a masterly played and recorded CD, with some highly interesting pieces from the oeuvre of three very important Italian composers and thinkers. I hope this label, the Norwegian Albedo Records, keeps producing releases of similarly high quality, artistically and technically.