"Luciano Berio: 'Time after time, I find myself returning to folk music. I want to take possession of this treasure-store, using my own resources. Even though I know it cannot come true, I have a utopian dream, namely to forge a single entity from our own music and the folk tradition.' America, the Auvergne, Sicily, Sardinia, Armenia and Azerbaijan: their diverse geographical origins reflect the multi-cultural society that Luciano Berio and his wife and preferred interpreter, Cathy Berberian, belonged to.... 'My transcriptions are analyses of folk songs, and at the same time convey the atmosphere, the "aroma" of this music as I understand it.'

Edison Denissow: The composer combines strict technique, echoes of Debussy and Webern, a casual chanson style, bebop, the Marseillaise (maestoso), the speaking and singing voice, colourful instrumentation, chromatic paraphrases that are squashed down as far as crotchets, and entirely new sounds to form an idiosyncratic, close-knit musical language that is every bit the equal of Vian's in its fundamental blackness and malignance."-Thomas Gartmann