Luigi Nono began Como una ola de fuerza y luz (Like a wave of strength and light) as a piece for piano and orchestra in 1971, at the instigation of
Maurizio Pollini. While the composition was in progress, Nono learned of the death of a young Chilean revolutionary and recast the work in his memory, with added parts for soprano soloist and tape. The resulting half hour work is clearly a lament, encompassing various expressions of grief, from stunned sorrow to anguish to the fiercest rage. As a kind of requiem, the work is deeply expressive and deeply moving.
Claudio Abbado leads the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in an overwhelming performance, made soon after the work's premiere. Soprano Slavka Taskova and
Pollini sing and play with great passion and commitment.
Scored for piano and tape, ...sofferte onde serene (...serene waves suffered, 1976) was also written for
Pollini. Like Como una ola de fuerza y luz, it has the character of a lament, but is more subdued, without the larger work's anguished outcry. The piece commemorates deaths of relatives of the composer's and the pianist's, and its overall mood of serene resignation is punctuated with clangorous clusters reminiscent of the tolling of bells. A third piece for tape, Contrappunto dialettico alla mente (1968), takes as its sound sources voices singing, speaking, and shouting, using texts by revolutionary poets and an American anti-war pamphlet. The composer describes the work as being inspired by a madrigal comedy written in 1608 by Adriano Banchieri, but it's difficult to discern any clear connection to musical conventions of the early Baroque. Instead, it's a spookily evocative indictment of the political injustices Nono deplored. The strong performances make the disc a fine introduction to some of Nono's most expressive and impassioned work.