Shostakovich 15 & Berio's Sinfonia conducted by Petrenko

Luciano Berio - Sinfonia, Dmitri Sjostakovitsj - Fifteenth Symphony. Programme Luciano Berio Sinfonia Dmitri Sjostakovitsj Fifteenth Symphony Vasily Petrenko, Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducts the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest in remarkable works by Berio and Sjostakovitsj. Unique collage Mahler is not on the programme and yet his music sounds in this concert. The entire middle section of Berio's Sinfonia is based on the Scherzo from Mahler's Second Symphony. It serves as a framework to which Berio adds numerous elements: music from Bach to Stravinsky and sung and spoken texts. In this way Berio creates a unique collage, a whirlwind of quotations, alienating and fascinating. Sinfonia is moreover influenced by impressions Berio gained in New York at that time (1968). Magical and tranquil Three years later Sjostakovitsj writes his Fifteenth Symphony. He too provides shelter for music by colleagues. Thus he quotes from works by, among others, Rossini and Wagner and from his own compositions. Quotations which he himself could not always explain. 'I simply could not leave them out', he would have said. It became his last symphony, without a grand finale, but with a magical and tranquil final section.