Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks - Musica viva, Vol. 47 (Live) (2025)

Munich’s Musica Viva concert series began in 1945 as an avenue for performances of new music, much of which had been banned during the Nazi regime. Today, in conjunction with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (BRSO), it remains a significant, high-profile international forum for contemporary composition and includes a CD series.

The latest recording, #47, is devoted to distinguished Australian composer Liza Lim AM (b. 1966) and features three orchestral works composed over a 20-year period. A Sutured World (2024) for cello and orchestra was written for German-French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt at his request and as part of a commission for the BRSO. Lim’s compositional preoccupation with transcultural spirituality is present here through the lens of wound healing with stitches (sutures).

Like Kintsugi, the ancient Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with visible gold seams, A Sutured World honours scars that constitute new attributes of beauty, rather than imperfections or flaws to be hidden. Sensitivity, instability and the idea of ‘making hallucination audible’ are rendered musically with close attention to the almost infinite timbral possibilities of the cello – guttural mechanics, beautiful cantabile, soaring gossamer transcendence – with glistening flashes of light from intricate orchestrations. Never less than enthralling and with extraordinary expressive capacity, particularly for the soloist, A Sutured World is destined to become a signature work of the cello repertoire.

Mary / Transcendence After Trauma (2021–2022) is the second part of Lim’s Annunciation Triptych, which devotes each of its three orchestral movements to an icon of historical female spirituality: the poet Sappho, the Virgin Mary, and Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad. As Lim puts it, “all three are not just about spiritual enlightenment, they’re about embodiment through women.”

Central to the section included here, which comprises seven movements, is the act of listening. Mary listens closely to what is happening in her body (Still Life with Foetus and Angel) and to a prophetic hallucination of human suffering leading to acceptance (Her Wild Consent) and, ultimately, healing, as a human woman from the trauma and responsibility of giving birth to the saviour of the world, and transformation. This combination of corporeal literality and the ineffable receives a most effective expression in Lim’s skilful use of orchestral shading, dynamics, percussion and judicious use of string arrangements suggestive of Strauss and Wagner.

The Compass (2005–2006) for flute, didgeridoo and large orchestra uses the contrasting registers of the solo instruments – both of which require breath from the body to produce their music – to locate the didgeridoo in a contemporary orchestral context. It is the outsider here, and the journey it takes through the work alongside the flute is in a context of constantly shifting orchestral fluidity. This is an appropriate point at which to acknowledge the superior sound quality of this recording, particularly evident in the shimmering orchestral colours and massive but nuanced presence of the digeridoo.

Lim’s is a fascinating, deeply spiritual and constantly evolving musical language, shining here in the profoundly sensitive performances of the BRSO and soloists on this recording.

TRACKLIST

1. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Edward Gardner;Nicolas Altstaedt - A Sutured World: I. Take This Broken Wing… (Live)
2. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Edward Gardner;Nicolas Altstaedt - A Sutured World: II. Chrysalis (Live)
3. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Edward Gardner;Nicolas Altstaedt - A Sutured World: III. Sutra (Live)
4. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Edward Gardner;Nicolas Altstaedt - A Sutured World: IV. Simon Says. Alle Vögel fliegen hoch (Live)
5. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": I. Still Life with Foetus and Angel (Live)
6. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": IIa. Audi, pontus (Live)
7. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": IIb. Audi, tellus (Live)
8. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": IIc. Audi maris magni limbus (Live)
9. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": III. Her Wild Consent (Live)
10. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": IV. Sidera super terram cadent (Live)
11. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Franck Ollu - Mary "Transcendence After Trauma": V. Mary - Tree of Light (Live)
12. Christoph Poppen;Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Carin Levine;William Barton - The Compass: I. — (Live)
13. Christoph Poppen;Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra;Carin Levine;William Barton - The Compass: II. — (Live)