Berio: Sequenza Xii, Bassoon

This
piece requires enormous virtuosity, if only because the player must employ
circular-breathing technique throughout; the result is a work sounding for 19
minutes without breaks or pauses for breath. The work was tailor-made for
French bassoonist Pascal Gallois, who added the special annotations to the
score.

Berio
calls Sequenza XII “a meditation on
the circumstance that the bassoon – perhaps more than any other wind instrument
– seems to have oppositional characteristics in its personality – differing
profiles, differing articulation options, differing characteristics of timbre
and dynamics.”