(Dis)Arrangements 19: Sciarrino’s Dreams

Grant Chu Covell

[January 2026.]

“Paesaggi con macerie.” Salvatore SCIARRINO: Paesaggi con macerie (2022); Le voci sottovetro (1999)*; Esplorazione del bianco II (1986); Gesualdo senza parole (2013). Monica Bacelli* (m-sop), Icarus vs Muzak, Marco Angius (cond.). Kairos 0022022KAI (1 CD) (www.kairos-music.com).

Richard WAGNER: Wesendonck-Lieder, WWV 91 (1857-58; arr. Hans Werner HENZE, 1976)*; Siegfried-Idyll, WWV 103 (1870); Träume for solo violin and small orchestra, WWV 91b (1873)**. Salvatore SCIARRINO: Languire a Palermo (Wagner, melodie ultime) (2019). Sara Mingardo* (c-alt), Massimo Quarta** (vln), Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, Marco Angius (cond.). Brilliant Classics 96119 (1 CD) (www.brilliantclassics.com).

“Beethoven/5 Vol. 4.” Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 (1805-06)¹. Salvatore SCIARRINO: Il Sogno di Stradella (2017)². Jonathan Biss (pno), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Malin Broman¹, Omer Meir Wellber² (cond.). Orchid Classics ORC100399 (1 CD) (www.orchidclassics.com).

I could write volumes on Sciarrino’s approach towards other music. Some of Sciarrino’s Scarlatti was discussed here, other pieces here. This distinctive Italian composer confidently comments upon others’ music through arrangement and recomposition. He’s drawn upon Machaut, Claude le Jeune, Gesualdo, Bach, Stradella, Scarlatti (Alessandro and Domenico), Mozart, Chopin, Liszt and Wagner to name a few that are evident, and has also arranged Ellington, Porter, Gershwin, et al.

Recentish recordings display Sciarrino’s range. There are no standard words to categorize Sciarrino’s art: Kairos offers two apparently straightforward Gesualdo arrangements and a third curiosity, Brilliant includes a Wagner elaboration, and on Orchid we find a complete fantasy.

Gesualdo has filtered through several Sciarrino compositions. The 1998 opera Luci mie traditrici (“My traitorous eyes”) concerns the composer as murderer. On hearing that Schnittke was working up a Gesualdo opera, Sciarrino decided to eliminate all traces, musical and narrative, of the Italian count. Luci mie traditrici incorporates a Claude Le Jeune tune instead, and Sciarrino’s considerations of Gesualdo’s music spun off elsewhere.

On this Kairos release we get Le voci sottovetro (“Voices under glass”) and Gesualdo senza parole (“Gesualdo without words”). Sciarrino arranges two dances and two madrigals for Le voci sottovetro. The “elaborations” are crisp, for single instruments spread across registers and distinct timbres, including bass flute, muted string trio and a large percussion kit. Reset for single voice and instruments, the five-part “Tu m’uccidi, o crudele” becomes momentarily Mahlerian. Likewise “Moro, lasso” takes on ethereal qualities as Sciarrino stirs in modern effects.

Gesualdo senza parole arranges four madrigals. Does arrange adequately convey what Sciarrino does? As Sciarrino asserts, Gesualdo’s music looks so far forward that any performance or instrumentation automatically becomes commentary. The first three madrigals “Non t’amo,” “Sparge la morte” and “Se la mia morte brami” are relatively straightforward instrumentations. “Beltà poi chè t’assenti” opens with the bewitching rustling we expect from Sciarrino, and as Gesualdo’s lines come into focus, the marimba takes a dominant role.

The Kairos production begins with Paesaggi con macerie, an eccentric piece, even for Sciarrino. Setting aside the included program note which appears in English as bulky and bookish, there are three disproportionally sized movements suggesting a stroll through “Landscapes with rubble.” The first part, “Vento e polvere” (“Wind and dust”) re-introduces us to Sciarrino’s sound world. Strings and winds produce tones through multiphonics or extended bowing techniques that are rich in harmonics while a flute busies in the background at something innocuously tonal and familiar.

The central part, “Frantumi” (“Fragments”) is the largest, most comprehensible and most magical. Imagine a waltz with an extra step, in this case silence. Sciarrino has appropriated a Chopin Mazurka, orchestrating it for two beats out of four. Is the music erased, or shredded? The effect is devastating, as the tonal loveliness, scored with Sciarrino’s habitual Klangfarbenmelodie lightness starts and stops, familiar but broken. Any melancholy is shattered with the third part, “Cancellazione” (“Cancellation”), a perverse punchline which dresses a more standard continual orchestration under a persistent rattle not unlike a spinning roulette wheel.

(Esplorazione del bianco II is the most “normal” Sciarrino piece on the Kairos disc. I wonder if under its whispering flute, clarinet, guitar and violin, there might be another piece embedded or obscured as we are pulled into the whiteness.)

Sandwiched between Henze’s orchestration of the Wesendonck-Lieder and the Siegfried-Idyll is Sciarrino’s Languire a Palermo, an exploration of Wagner’s last tunes. The Wagner sources are the so-called Porazzi Theme and the 1881 piano Elegy, whose titles are sometimes interchanged. Wagner’s last years were spent in Italy, and the Tempo di Porazzi was reputedly written in February 1882, in Palermo, Sciarrino’s hometown, at a villa on Contrada Porrazzi, eventually misspelled. Wagner died in Venice, in 1883. Legend has it he played the piano Elegy for Cosima during his last days.

Sciarrino cycles through Wagner’s last thoughts, providing refined Klangfarbenmelodie orchestration, subtly tweaking accompaniment. The single line may be tarnished with Sciarrino’s customary gasping flute and quivering harmonics. Now and again there’s a velvety Romantic flush, but overall, this is the most emaciated Wagner ever.

Wagner’s Elegy, or Porazzi tune, was created alongside Parsifal (or Tristan und Isolde), and it surprises that someone in the habit of grandiose statements would also create something so slight. Other composers have wrestled with this incongruity. Peter Ruzicka’s handling for strings, flutes and percussion, Elegie. Erinnerung für Orchester (2014), bathes the fragment in dissonant layers, grinding forwards and backwards. Sciarrino presents the material, whereas Ruzicka interprets it.

For a sequence of Beethoven’s piano concertos, Jonathan Biss commissioned five new companion works. Orchid Classic’s fourth volume documenting the series, pairs Beethoven’s Fourth with Sciarrino’s Il Sogno di Stradella (the other composers are Timo Andres, Sally Beamish, Brett Dean and Caroline Shaw). The piece starts with typical Sciarrino airiness: String pizzicato at the bridge which results in more noise than pitch (sounding like marching boots), squirrely flute wisps, and tentative piano arabesques. The soloist is shrouded, maybe contributing a few isolated notes. Then the middle section where the piano plays a tune that could be Chopin or Satie, then something that might be Stradella, all presented under a held high pitch like tinnitus or a nearby alarm. After several repetitions, varying silvery accompaniment, the opening material returns.

Stradella was the subject of another Sciarrino opera, Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo (In attesa di Stradella) (“To see you, to feel you, to lose me (Waiting for Stradella)”) (2017). Instead of an opera about a composer who committed murder, this opera is about a composer who was murdered. Il Sogno di Stradella’s tonal themes probably contain Stradella, but I cannot be sure of this, although publicity material for the opera’s performance in Milan contains the concerto’s second tonal idea in a different orchestration (of course, knowing what we know about Luci mie traditrici, subject and content don’t have to align).

At first glance, or even after deep consideration, there’s little here resembling Beethoven. Except that the Fourth’s Andante contains that astounding contrast between assertive orchestra and lyric piano, not unlike Il Sogno di Stradella where the piano leads through striking a remarkably different attitude. Sciarrino’s abstruse note does not help us, suggesting Stradella was ahead of his time, as much as he was anchored to it. “Stradella’s music is spring and also autumn.” Is this Stradella’s dream, or are we dreaming about Stradella?

Marco Angius is the conductor for both the Kairos and Brilliant releases. The categorically contemporary works are handled expertly and Gesualdo rings clear. Languire a Palermo is treated as if fragile porcelain, which fits the mood. We can hear how the Henze orchestration requires a particular heaviness whereas the Sciarrino demands transparency. Likewise, the Swedish Radio finds all the details in Il Sogno di Stradella and Biss sets the tone.