Eliot Fisk Transcribes Luciano Berio for Guitar

Eliot Fisk playing Luciano Berio’s music on the altar of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (screenshot from the YouTube video of the performance)

As Fridays go, this morning was a relatively quiet one. As a result, I had ample time this morning to continue my traversal of the four new videos released by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. Some readers may recall that yesterday’s video, the first in the series, was a duet performance by guitarist Mark Leighton with Johanna Dömöttör on flute. Today’s offering was a solo guitar performance by Eliot Fisk, who will be giving a solo recital for Omni in March 13 of next year as part of the 2026–2027 Dynamite Guitars programs.

It turns out that Fisk visited St. Mark’s Lutheran Church a little less than three weeks ago to record a video for the Omni Live from St. Mark’s series. This turned out to be a short-but-sweet performance, less than three minutes in duration. It was a transcription for solo guitar of the 24th movement in Luciano Berlo’s collection 34 Duetti per due violini, scored for two violins. (Berio composed this collection between 1979 and 1983.) The title of this particular duet was “Aldo;” and Fisk prepared the transcription himself.

I have to confess that my knowledge of Berio is a personal one. During my student days, he was a visiting faculty member at the Music Department at Harvard University. After I got to know him and showed him how I was using a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-6 to make music, he invited me to participate in “Passaggio – ‘messa in scena’,” a full-evening composition scored for soprano, chorus and orchestra. I was part of that “chorus;” and the reason for those scare quotes is that I was one of about a dozen people sitting among the audience shouting insults at the stage!

I suspect that most, of not all, of Berio’s violin duets were far less raucous than “Passaggio.” To the contrary, “Aldo” is quiet and intimate; and that is the way that Fisk performed his transcription. Indeed, as is often the case, the camera homes in on how his fingerwork manages the thematic content. These days my encounters with Berio’s music tend to be his “Sequenza” compositions for solo instrument; so I am almost certain that I have not previously encountered any of those violin duets! On the other hand, Fisk’s performance made the music sound as if Berio had originally written it for guitar, leading me to wonder if any of those violin duets are getting the attention of violinists these days!