#50 - Berio: Coro; Zuraj: Automatones - CD

From the outset, Sir Simon Rattle's conducting career has been marked by a spirit of innovation and renewal - and contemporary music in all it's facets continues to play a significant role in his work. So it was only natural that, upon taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, he should dedicate a concert to musica viva. The programme featured the world premiere of Vito Žuraj's "Automatones" as well as Luciano Berio's "Coro". Sir Simon Rattle has conducted the latter piece several times before, but this performance marks the first recording under his baton. This is due to the unique demands that the composition places on recording technology: choir singers and orchestra musicians are positioned in pairs on the podium to overcome the visual and acoustic separation of choir and orchestra voices. This presented a particular challenge to the Bavarian Radio recording team, but they rose to it successfully, as can be heard on the new CD from BR-KLASSIK. Composed between 1975 and 1976, Luciano Berio's "Coro", for forty voices and orchestra, takes anonymous folk poems by the Sioux, the Navajo and the Zuni, as well as song texts from Polynesia, Peru, Croatia, Venice, Piedmont, Chile, and the Song of Solomon - all of them reflecting the deeply human urge for freedom - and combines them with the moving poetry of Pablo Neruda, whose death coincided with the bloody suppression of the Allende democracy in Chile by Augusto Pinochet in September 1973.