From Bvhaast 032-033:

Bruno Maderna April 21, 1920 in Venice, November 13, 1973 in Darmstadt. Italian composer, music researcher and conductor. After a career as an infant prodigy, he conducted the international chamber ensemble, Darmstadt, from 1958 to 1967. He conducted countless performances of modern compositions and fostered their promotion. Between 1967 in 1970 he taught composition and conducting at various courses and institutes. He was guest conductor of numerous European and American orchestras. In 1954 he founded with L. Berio the electronic music studio at Milan Radio RAI. His output includes practically all genres of present-day music: opera, solo concertos, chamber music, electronic music, works for solo instruments and symphonic music. His last work, the opera "Satyricon" 1973 was performed for the first time in Holland shortly before his death. He was unable to attend a performance, which was conducted by his pupil, Lucas Vis. Maderna published completely new versions of various works by Josquin Des Pres, G. Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Viadana and Vivaldi, demonstrating that the past does not survive merely by virtue of being revived, but by being brought up to date by the great minds of our time. These works are not "revisions" in the classical sense, but new compositions based on historical models. The proceeds of this record are for Maderna’s heirs, his widow Christina and his children.

If life had given him the fair deal Maderna had always hoped for, he would have been celebrating his 60th birthday on April 21, 1980. He died on November 13, 1973, a disillusioned and lonely man, abandoned by most of the people who have profited by his friendship. An infant prodigy who conducted the orchestra of La Scala Milan at the age of eight, he was torn throughout his life between the loneliness of fame and the loneliness of a man who gave music and musical life such powerful, impulses that those directing that musical life and their minions repeatedly spurned him whenever he looked like making things uncomfortable for them. He had perpetual doubts as to his qualities as a composer -- he, who mastered the technique of composing as no other. "I really only write Kapellmeister music", he once complained to me. My reply was that people have said the same thing about Mahler, and other great composers as well.

What made Maderna important as a composer and a spirit of his time was that he constantly and with the utmost refinement translated contemporary compositional techniques into an entirely personal musical language, passing on his experience in a highly unorthodox fashion to those he liked, to those he considered his friends. He had no "school", gave no good marks and would not tolerate a circle of chosen disciples. The new techniques and ideas which he conveyed to others were no mere fashions for them to follow slavishly. Maderna the Venetian was highly educated as no other composer of his generation, he knew the history of European music, not as a series of dead facts but as a living past, mirrored in the latest musical developments.

He treated orchestral players and soloists who appreciated him as a composer in the same way as he taught his composer-friends without lecturing them. He did not hold lengthy perorations on how to perform new music, he simply composed pieces for them. Especially in Holland, where he had the most enemies, but also the most friends, he found musicians who are willing without any fuss and with joy, to play the pieces he wrote for them. He composed them in hotel rooms when he was on tour, composed them without any doctrine whatsoever. Their language however, is so charming and personal that they deserve to be heard after his death.

The Juilliard-Serenade is one of the ultimate compositions by Maderna. It was composed in 1971. The first performance took place in 1972. This serenade is a synthesis between  rigorous part-writing and free, improvised passages whose definite development can be determinated by the composer. The presentation of these four compositions resulting from musical life in Holland, two of its protagonists and Madera's activity in Holland as a composer and conductor, has just one aim: to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of this very special man and musician and to pay tribute to him on this occasion.

All those involved in both recordings have given their services free of charge to make this record possible. We are obliged and grateful to them, and with them, are convinced that Madera's spirit will continue to stimulate composers and musicians in Europe for a long time, and that it will go on fermenting their ideas.

Konrad Boehmer, translated by Ruth Koenig


From Wergo 60029:

Of all the melodic instruments, the flute takes up a prominent position in New Music due to the interest that so many composers have shown in it. They have been stimulated by outstanding soloists and by the fact that this instrument offers a wide range of articulating possibilities. Severino Gazzelloni provides an insight into various stylistic spheres.

Bruno Maderna (1920): Hyperion III. "Hyperion III" is an interpolation of the earlier works "Hyperion I" (Aria for Soprano and Orchestra to texts by Holderlin) and "Hyperion II" (Stele per "Diotima", Serenata for Orchestra). Metrical orchestral tutti are opposed to improvised flute soli ranging from a lyrical hysterical character. This generates a fragmentary impression - the chasms between the orchestral tuttis and the flute passages are deliberately left largely unbridged.

Severino Gazzelloni has taken a decisive part in the rediscovery of the flute in contemporary music. Many works have been dedicated to him. He studied at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Now 52-years-old, he has been teaching at the Darmstadt Holiday courses since 1952, and is on the staff at the Summer School of Music, Darlington, of the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He is also solo flutist in the RAI Symphony Orchestra in Milan.


From TIME 58002:

Bruno Maderna's SERENATA # 2 (1954) reflects its author's sure mastery of practical orchestration. The composer's chief concern is with the harmonious fashioning and arrangement of delectable sonorities. The most drawn out of chords is used to catch one up in a shimmer of color, rather than in an expressionistic, functional context. In the first part, a striking use of consonant intervals suggests an evocation of the classical Italian serenade; an impression which is quickly swept away by the introduction of other, mobile sonorities, less familiar and less symmetrical, built up into good-humored, diminutive structures reminding the listener of Webern. These lead in turn to the most original pages of the score: series of repeated notes in evenly spaced rhythms, subtly varied, combined poly-rhythmically, and mixed toward the end with long, held notes stressing their figuration-a tableau of dark nocturnal towns, stirring with pulsation, of a type (judging by his many electronic works) for which Maderna seems to have a special poetic affinity.

BRUNO MADERNA was born in Venice in 1920. He graduated from the Conservatory of Rome in 1940 and subsequently attended the master classes in composition of Gian Francesco Malipiero in Venice. Mr. Maderna studied conducting with Antonio Guarnieri and Hermann Scherchen. He has composed extensively for orchestra, soloists and electronic media and has been, with Luciano Berio, co- director of the "Studio di Fonologia di Musicali" of Milan. He is one of the leading young conductors in Europe, specializing in new music, but also conducting works from all periods in the history of music. 


From Finnadar SR 9007:

Bruno Maderna: Viola

Maderna's death (on November 13, 1973, at the age of 53) did not make the front page: he was not one of your musical fossils. One obituary I remembered was in Le Monde: "The sun as well as the moon were always present in his music."

Viola was composed in 1971. We offer here to versions of the work. One is in closed-form. The piece played from start to finish, just like any conventional score. The other is one of the many possible open-form versions. According to the composer's instructions, it can be started at any point of the player's choice, fragments and sections interpolated and any of these repeated at will, the composition played in whole or in part, and an ending found to the performer's satisfaction.

Ilhan Mimaroglu