Solos and Underdogs

Low, breathy woodwind timbres are among my favorites (there’s a great passage in the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth), and the two double concertos offer ample room for dexterity and color.

Anomalies Pleasant and Surprising

Berio may have been the postwar generation’s most sentimental if not most wistful composer. Unlike many of his peers, he acknowledged music’s history and would freely adapt, orchestrate and reinterpret the music of others, as well as his own.