A more authoritative view will follow on the wireless tomorrow morning.
I somehow doubt it. My memories of the studio session are increasingly of gratuitous smiling, waffle, trying to sound 'approachable' and not managing my usual trick of (I think!) combining this with an aura of understated intelligence (
). Maybe they've managed to retrieve my reputation in the editing suite, but I'm not holding my breath. In fact, the way I'm feeling at the moment I'd rather you didn't listen, though of course I don't deny responsibility for my own failings.
Either way, just to show that I do actually have some coherent thoughts somewhere in my head, even if they don't always make it out of my mouth, I'd say in response to your summary above that:
Variazioni is lovely and surprising indeed, and oddly enough, given what I was listening to earlier in the week, not as far away as I might have expected from some of the composers Scelsi was influencing elsewhere in Europe around this time (for which reason I originally planned to play some of this piece and eventually decided not to)
Allegoria I liked for what it did with the Mendelssohn, but could easily change my mind on further listenings about how successful this is. Anyway, my provisional conclusion was more positive than yours and I talked quite a bit about this, also partly because it allowed me to highlight the issue of Sciarrino's relationship to tradition (which I think is present even when less explicit)
Morte di Borromini: as you say it would help to familiarise oneself with the spoken text, which it's a pity therefore no one bothered to translate into any language other than Italian for the booklet
I fuochi: I listened again this afternoon and liked some of it better, though I still think it has structural weaknesses of one sort or another
Recitativo oscuro seems to me to be what a Sciarrino orchestral piece (+ piano) should be, and was the other piece I played and talked about for the programme
Frammento e Adagio I'd had a less positive impression of, but will re-visit at some point when I'm feeling flute-y
The two most recent orchestral pieces I agree with your comments.
