The Salzburg Festival is not necessarily the first venue that comes to mind as a vehicle for contemporary music. The booklet note for Orfeo's Berio: Epifanie, Coro agrees -- the Felsenreitschule concert of August 19, 1974, featuring Luciano Berio's Epifanie was "played to whole rows of empty seats." Those who stayed home missed a truly stunning performance with the ORF-Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the young Leif Segerstam and, at the top of her form, the queen bee of contemporary music singers, Cathy Berberian. ...
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The Salzburg Festival is not necessarily the first venue that comes to mind as a vehicle for contemporary music. The booklet note for Orfeo's Berio: Epifanie, Coro agrees -- the Felsenreitschule concert of August 19, 1974, featuring Luciano Berio's Epifanie was "played to whole rows of empty seats." Those who stayed home missed a truly stunning performance with the ORF-Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the young Leif Segerstam and, at the top of her form, the queen bee of contemporary music singers, Cathy Berberian. Thanks to Orfeo's long-running reissue program of Salzburg Festival performances, a generation of more appreciative listeners can now have a ticket to this long-ago concert.Now that both Berio and Berberian have joined the departed and Segerstam looks like a Viking warrior who can hardly keep the crumbs out of his beard, it is much easier to admire this performance than perhaps it was in 1974. Liner note writer Gottfried Kraus tries to have it both ways, citing both the empty seats...
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