Giovanni Legrenzi, Luciano Berio, Giovanni Gabrieli, Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, Dennis Russell Davies

Now, and Then brings together two Italian modernists who looked backwards as readily as forwards. Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) had a deep affection for the music of the Italian Renaissance and early Baroque. His chamber orchestra transcriptions of Frescobaldi, Legrenzi, Gabrieli, Viadana and Wassenaer frame the first recording of Chemins V by his friend Luciano Berio (1925-2003). Both halves of the programme are acts of rewriting, one aimed at old masters, the other at Berio's own music.

The Orchestra della Svizzera italiana plays under Dennis Russell Davies, with Pablo Márquez as guitar soloist in the Berio. The sessions took place in August 2015 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, in a co-production of ECM and RSI Rete Due. Manfred Eicher produced the album and Michael Rast was the Tonmeister, while Paul Griffiths wrote the English booklet essay.

Most of the transcriptions date from 1952, among them the Tre pezzi after Frescobaldi and Viadana's Le Sinfonie, whose short movements carry the names of Italian cities. The Palestrina-Konzert of Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer was long attributed to Pergolesi. Gabrieli's Canzone a tre cori is later, from 1969/72. Maderna wrote for modern instruments and had no interest in historically informed orthodoxy, believing old works could find new meaning outside their original context. Chemins V (1992) is Berio's version for guitar and chamber orchestra of his solo Sequenza XI. Márquez moves between flamenco gestures and the classical guitar tradition, while the orchestra expands the harmony around him and picks up the guitar's percussive attack.

Reviewing the album in The Observer, Nicholas Kenyon wrote that the Berio "weaves a sensuous aura around the guitar's nostalgic flamenco chords" and found the Maderna transcriptions "done with real taste". In the Sunday Times, Paul Driver singled out the sudden scrubbing of Berio's interpolation, which "dramatically redirects attention from line to texture". Andy Gill in The Independent found the reed and string blends of the Frescobaldi especially luminous, and German reviewers praised the transparency of Davies's readings.

This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2485, released on 27 October 2017, with a booklet in English, Italian and German.