How to play GESTI by Berio | Team Recorder

'Gesti' by Luciano Berio (1966) is a masterpiece - one of the best pieces of contemporary music for recorder. In this video I explain how it works, how to tackle the score, AND give a full performance of the piece at the end!
It is an advanced piece, so if you are aiming to play it, in this video I'm assuming you already have skills under your belt like flutter tongue and double tonguing.
And yes, this is a crazy challenging piece! I know not everyone will want to be tackling it - but it's a really good piece for all recorder players to know about and to listen to anyway even if you don't play it, as it's fascinating :)
Big thanks to lessons and advice from my teachers and recorder players Jorge Isaac, Walter van Hauwe an Kees Boeke.
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In this video I play on a 440 alto by Yoav Ran, and a 440 tenor by Yamaha.
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Website: www.sarahjeffery.com
Twitter/Instagram @sockmyshoe
Go #teamrecorder

[@Cecilia-bp2dn]

Wow Sarah! Awesome introduction to your preparation for this piece and proof that being a musician involves so much more than just playing the right notes in the right sequence. Interpretation and performance delivery really make a world of difference.

[@janeward2878]

Wonderful!! More please! It is so hard for interested amateur players to find help with understanding and playing modern recorder pieces. I am extremely lucky in having help from two great teachers but your video is inspirational and very helpful. All modern music is tough on the listener too but your discussion really helps make it more accessible. Thanks so much!

[@hvadhvem6138]

I am truly impressed!! Even though the introduction you provided really explained the piece, still during your performance I was in awe of the intensity you put in it, and you got me hung on every note and rhythm, I was constantly excited for what would come next! Thank you Sarah for bringing contemporary recorder music to KZbin, I need to give it a try at some point :)

[@laurieturner57]

Such energy and intensity! It would be wonderful to see this danced in the style of Martha Graham. Thanks for this opened window. Laurie

[@hanzabass]

great video. This explains why there are so many vastly different interpretations of this piece. I will have to play this a few times to come to the essence of this. Again, a great and valuable lesson!

[@gardeniainbloom812]

The look on your face at the end is how I felt about the piece. This was beyond my skill level and patience. I like Markus Zahausen and others. However, thank you for going through how you tackle it. Seeing the process was useful. The variety of content you upload is truly wonderful. You're a blessing.

[@ruaraidhwishart5709]

what a great Christmas present! More like this please - I find contemporary avant garde recorder music to be pretty scary and this took a bit if the sting out of it. Your performance at the end was amazing!

[@MsDganit]

I'm not a recorder player but it was absolutely fantastic to learn from a recorder player how you perform this master piece! Thanks:)

[@jimmagwojo2718]

Wow Sarah, i loved this ... really great and useful and definitely an amazing challenge - seeing you play it at the end was a real treat - you were so in the zone, if you get the opportunity to record more please do

[@lordwilksy]

I think Berio would have LOVED this masterclass!

[@joaquinmendozas]

I've been subscribed to your channel for a couple of years now and I'm just finding out about this video, the algorithm recommended it to me out of the blue... this is great, Berio is one of my favorite composers and probable the pice of music I love the most was written by him (Laborintus II)... wonderful video and wonderful performance!

[@FernieCanto]

This pieces becomes so much more forceful by *watching* your performance, knowing that all that physical force is strictly necessary, and not just fanciful theatrics. What an amazing way to make the recorder sound kick-ass and brutal! You've put a lot of heavy metal shredders to shame. :)

[@Frederer59]

Wow! A truely selfless act for art's sake. Thank you and Merry Christmas!

[@gorgeousjoanna]

That was fascinating! Music like that would have scared me senseless but your discussion leading into the piece made it so much more comprehensible. Thank you!

[@Team_Recorder]

Thank you, that's so nice to hear! :)

[@Macvriendin]

You are agreat performer Sarah! And such a wonderful peace to play! A perfect performance technically as well as musically. And such a challenge! Daar kun je je echt in vast bijten! I never knew there were so many sounds a body and a recorder together (or not together!) could produce. Thank you for posting this. I enjoyed it very much. Your channel brings me a lot of joy. I love watching it en learning from you. Thank you for starting and maintaining this channel en please keep it up! I think you are awesome. Have a Nice day😘

[@Team_Recorder]

+Monique Houdijk Nou Monique, bedankt voor je lieve bericht! Dat heeft zeker wat zon bezorgd op dot koude winterse ochtend (ondanks code oranje weerbericht hier in nederland!) 😊

[@lynnnielsen2058]

Quite fascinating, as being new to the recorder I had never heard of Gesti!

[@petestack]

Hi Sarah, I enjoyed that. I performed Gesti myself as a third-year music student at Edinburgh University back in 1985, then later heard a much better (than mine) performance by Aldo Abreu when I continued to Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag for a year in 1986-7. So found your analysis and performance a thought-provoking trip to my past, reaching for my well-thumbed score *after* your performance (no, I didn't actually follow it!) to check some instructions I'd since forgotten.

[@hgmvanderzanden]

Your lesson is great, the piece itself is showing the wide range of non harmonics possible with a recorder, but just for once a year.

[@jacobienw7332]

Thank you for your video! I've heard you at the Gesti Masterclass in Amsterdam and thought it great, so expressive. Wonderful to learn more about the piece in this video and hear it again.

[@RudiSchmitt]

Fantastic! Thank you so much!

[@elGundzios]

😲 I am not to modern music, but I can see mastery in your play! I never knew all those sounds are possible on a recorder 🙂

[@Balderick]

....Crikey! Wouldn't want that earworm stuck in my head. Love your videos by the way.

[@sleepydrJ]

Thanks so much for this video! Gesti had been under my radar, although looking back, I think I may have heard it at a Sour Creme concert at Stanford in 1975, as a very young girl. I was enthralled by all things Bruggen, and my parents took me. I remember being very confused by the juxtaposition of serene renaissance music with bizarre modern stuff together with weird light effects and maybe some fog machines. After seeing your video I went and looked at a video of him playing it on KZbin. Your video provides great context on the piece, and how it really requires virtuosity- not just flipping about on the recorder. I'm not sure I necessarily call the work "music" but It certainly is an incredible and creative work that shows off the player and the unique characteristics of the recorder. The unique notation is also really interesting! (ps- I prefer the sound of your interpretation! you have more of a range of tones and it makes it more accessible somehow.)

[@Team_Recorder]

Wow, that's amazing that you saw him performing it! That would be an absolute dream. I'm happy that I could provide another 'way in' to the piece - I feel people can get it much better with just a little explanation. Thanks for watching!

[@bhess246]

Wow! that was so cool! I am going to have to get a copy of that piece and adapt it for Bassette!

[@sleepydrJ]

Bass Burner by pete rose is also wild and modern, but with written notes and rhythms..

[@DeeBroughton]

Wow! I feel I've seen a whole other side to Sarah now. A little scary! :) Thanks so much for doing this. Where else would we casual player have ever found out more about this piece?!

[@BiffarellaGonzalo]

Conocí a Berio. Pienso que hubiera disfrutado mucho tu versión, así como yo la disfruté. Felicitaciones!

[@muove1]

Hi, I'm using my very first youtube comment for this:I totally love what you did here. Lately I'm fascinated by contemporary music (sixties is that still contemporary?) but struggling to get into it. This helped a lot to make me really listen and enjoy it. Thank you!

[@tomfranck2927]

Simply flabbergasting!

[@hunterharris4869]

OMG thank you soooooo much!!!

[@arkivuo5284]

wow.. I dont think I ever understood what contemporary music meant before. I thought it was "modern" as in "pop music" or something like that. (Im not a native English speaker) That was pretty awsome!

[@Team_Recorder]

+Viktor Grahn Thanks!

[@Antropomusico]

When talent meets Uniqueness, an so meets performanceship, and so meets Beauty in what you hear, sense and see, meets Sarah Jeffery

[@brancofrandi]

Amazing!

[@pedrohbrinck]

One of my favorite performances of this piece. How much time it took you to memorize the whole piece? Amazing, Sarah. You should definitely do more of this explaining of the repertoire. I love it.

[@emilynightingale7758]

imagine if some random person was walking past her house when she was playing this... I would not have the confidence to play this in front of anybody

[@Team_Recorder]

Hahaaa I bet my neighbors love to hear me practicing 🙈

[@rockdalegaming8944]

Subcontrabass recorder for da win!! ;-) Berio for me is an aquired taste. Nevertheless, thanks for this window into that world. I hear a touch of Elliot Carter in the last section with actual notes, but it could be I've been listening to too much Elliot Carter - lol.

[@MA-nc9bo]

can you do a video on why you love playing the recorder and why you picked a recorder over other instruments

[@josecarrion9698]

Hi Sarah, you may want to mention that most web browsers will translate Blokfuitist website into English!!!

[@omerharun]

one great piece that i wil never be able to play but will always enjoy listenning to it being played especially by you. by the way; be my friend? :)

[@ziomatthewmusic4205]

As a pianist this video blew my mind.

[@ziomatthewmusic4205]

Really not a fan. For me the word contemporary = stupid. Modern art, modern dance and whatever this is. Give me proper playing. Then again it is great that people do this, that they create new ways of playing, like different genres of music. It is great that everyone doesn’t just play classical music and all other genres were invented. Like I love metal music which I guess at one point in time was new and ‘contemporary’. Same with modern art. I personally hate it and don’t get it but some people love it and take lots of meaning from it.

[@matthewj.greenbaum8998]

This is wonderfully helpful. I'm primarily a composer, but intend to learn this piece for concert performance. Your explanation of the structure was excellent and your performance was great and exciting. Do you know the Sequenza for voice? It would make an interesting pairing with Gesti if you can ever program them together; Gesti seems to be a kind of Sequenza for voice all by itself. Or, for a real challenge, learn to sing the one for voice!!

[@Team_Recorder]

I love the sequenza for voice! I've performed Gesti in a programme with the vocal one a few times, at a Berio symposium once for example... maybe one day I'll tackle singing it myself :D (maybe)

[@gatozarin]

okay but why is no one commenting about how brilliant the performance at the end is?????

[@Team_Recorder]

Aww thanks 😘

[@fizito_]

You're awesome!! I started studying with a soprano recorder, and i have a question: can you make a note fade? like, when i play a note, be it high or low, i can't make it gradually softer, i can only stop it or move to the next note. is there a technique or something like that that i'm missing? congrats on the channel, really cool!

[@Team_Recorder]

Oh yes, that is a very good question! The question of diminuendo is discussed a bit in my video 'How to play soft' - but it merits its own video soon! basically you can fade - decrease the breath pressure whilst leaking one of the holes (the top finger for an extreme effect, lower fingers for a less extreme one). The breath pressure makes the note softer but lower, and leaking air with one finger corrects this. Phew! I hope it works for you!

[@fizito_]

+Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder it does, thank you so much!

[@tomm54321]

Take a look at the video "Piers Adams Masterclass 2016" on KZbin, which is largely devoted to this very thing (what he calls the "whoosh" technique of playing). At one point he plays a snatch from the Pink Panther theme to demonstrate it. The other main thing I got from the video was to limit recorder movement to up-and-down not side-to-side when playing, presumably so as not to distract the viewer too much.

[@Sd-ps9ig]

Alec Belacqua

[@anthonyblankenship3082]

This is just as intense as Scootin on Hardrock

[@nachofian8934]

well...i fell in love

[@Timbyte]

wow, that was weird piece.

[@Sd-ps9ig]

thats what i thougt of you stupid people

[@hanzabass]

you play the piece on a tenor. was it not wtitten with alto/treble in mind?

[@Team_Recorder]

+hanzabass It was written for alto, but the general consensus is that it can also be played on tenor! Walter van Hauwe, for example, plays on tenor.

[@johannreva]

Do you also play Western classical music or pop music Ms. Sarah?

[@beatesetzer2441]

humorous!

[@natalielebert1631]

Hmmm...this is completely beyond my skill level. Maybe do a piece for lower intermediate level players in the new year?

[@enzoma7253]

This. Is. Crazy.

[@NomadicNative]

I'm certain that you played it perfectly, but I'm not sure why.

[@dammitletshammock388]

You look like Van Halen on the recorder.

[@exitolaboral]

Seems to br an obstacle race! Is it a piece or is it an "etude"? Sarah you played very well!!! I think the composer might have enjoyed your performance very much... It sounds like a little whale trying to communicate with her mother? Cheers!!!

[@barthvapour]

I must admit it's not my cup of tea, but everyone has different tastes. However, it does perfectly fit the contemporary music stereotype: that is, if a listener had never heard it before, and you played any wrong note, at any pitch, at any time during the piece, the listener would remain oblivious to the error.

[@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist]

all music was contemporary at one point in history and your comments could easily be a quote from the Lexicon of Musical invective.

[@barthvapour]

@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist the fact that my statement applies to current contemporary music and would have been completely untrue in any other period from antiquity up until around the time of Stravinsky rather renders what you just said a non sequitur.

[@morganhayes8641]

@@barthvapour ‘The ‘Missa Solemnis (Beethoven) was generally regarded as an incomprehensible production, the depths of which it was impossible to fathom’ Musical Times, 1843. Countless other examples in the Lexicon of Musical Invective.

[@barthvapour]

@@morganhayes8641 thank you for that non-sequitur. My criticism of modern music is very specific to the absence of melodic flow and its chromaticism, criticisms which cannot be applied to the Missa Solemnis, nor any other works by Beethoven. Have you got any proper examples that illustrate the aspect I identified?

[@morganhayes8641]

@@barthvapour chromaticism is a negative characteristic? Beethoven, and particularly Mozart may have disagreed with you on that point :)

[@esequiel937]

❤❤❤❤❤😘

[@nonrecorder6185]

....may be in this video we can find some good reason to (try) to understand why in the last years Berio (unfortunatelly) considered this piece: " just an exercise".............

[@gatozarin]

this. is. so. hard. BUT I WILL DO IT.

[@AndreyOkhrimets]

Hi, Sarah, could you just do video and video why people love compatory music in this way. Yes this a difficult piece no questions asked, but what is point of it. To express yourself. For me recorder in this piece does not sound as a recorder at all. So I rather stick to classical baroko music. Because this is just not a music at least to my ears. I just do not understand why it is so fun to use recorder in this kind of rap style. May be I am wrong to that, but I am just not getting it. WHAT IS ultimate goal, that is set for a listener. Thank you so much for you videos I learned a lot from your videos.

[@deezynar]

I understand that it is a difficult piece to play, so a musician may be drawn to to something like this purely for the challenge. And it must feel great when you master the technical difficulties. I am bemused that there is any audience for most modern art. Ugliness seems to be the goal simply because artists in past centuries pursued beauty with such relentlessness that modern artists just wanted to do something different. Berio achieved something different from beauty with this piece.

[@nathanielouzana]

I think it was beautiful. You can find challenge in any style, so most musicians tend to chose their repertoire according to the music they like. One's trash is another man's treasure.

[@KakeiTheWoIf]

I'm going to be pretty frank here: this is harder to listen to than Xenakis. And that's saying a lot.

[@Hwyadylaw]

I believe it's a question of what you want from music. It requires a different perspective and mindset.

[@andrewc3142]

Very different from Bruggen's interpretation. Yours has more soul and humour, and is generally a bit madder - like it lots.

[@Team_Recorder]

Thanks! (though I have had the benefit of fifty years of people performing it behind me to guide me through and make my own interpretatin - hats off to Frans who was having to interpret it and work it all out for himself..!)

[@andrewcranmer9653]

It wasn't in any way a criticism of Frans Bruggen!! :) PS Didn't mean to post using an anonymous account.

[@Sd-ps9ig]

Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder v

[@Sd-ps9ig]

andrewc3142 is wierd😎😎😎😎😎🙂😎😎😎🙂😎😎🙂🙂😎🙂🙂😚🙂🙂🤗🙂😘😘😘😗😋😘😍😎😍😂😄😁😁☺

[@Sd-ps9ig]

1000000000 op $ day for this

[@saeediranban6640]

:-) :-) :-)

[@DoggoWithBread]

this is probably the funniest video I have ever seen

[@redcowcat8705]

That was weird... How do you even notate it?

[@Team_Recorder]

I’ll put it on my instagram! @sockmyshoe

[@111bonus]

What.

[@RGL01]

?!?!?!?!?!

[@willemkossen]

You clearly have done this before. Not to my taste. I get lost after about 1 millisecond. As far as im concerned the point is made with this one piece and no more is needed. Over smaak valt niet te twisten...

[@fredericfaucher328]

It looks like the exorcism

[@mickeywk]

Ok so i was unsubscribed from this channel ( i saw this video in my recomended). Bruh

[@myleslawless6594]

It is clearly difficult to play but. imho, not worth the effort. All I hear is cacophony

[@morganhayes8641]

Listen to it half a dozen times or so...that’s what I did when I encountered some music I found barely comprehensible. Just let it wash over you.

[@cygnusustus]

LOL. No thanks.

[@larrykent3568]

Stop trying to be funny, all you do is hold a instrument, and kinda, blah, blah, blah. Jeepers

[@tomm54321]

Hmm, I'm sure at one point you squeaked when you should have squawked... For a wider perspective on "contemporary classical", I can recommend the following video: "Why Modern Art is Absolute Crap" by Paul Joseph Watson. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hoO6e5aoh7Rjfa8#t=2.202927