cmajchord

Well I had a lot harder time making sense out this than the short tale. First of all, I am not familiar with the Berio duets, though being a sax player I have heard some of his solo saxophone works.
In structure, it seems very solid. The relationship between the two lines works well.
The esoteric harmonic vocabulary, however, is really hard to deal with. It's hard to really follow the expressive content. Actually, I'm listening to it again as I type this, and am following the thematic development much more easily. But as far as expressive content, it's hard to hang with this.
In my experience, these more "out there" pieces really do need to be carefully interpreted by musicians in LIVE performances. The pieces often seem to depend on the convincing dramtic performance of the musicians. It does not help at all that the midi file plays with such flat dynamcs and lack of "color".
This would probably be effective if played by really expressive musicians. While I can't say that I had a profound aesthetic experience while analyzing the piece, I do think that it is very well thought out and very "cranial".

*addition* While I thought this piece was very rhythmically driving, I think I would have liked a more "sustained" and lyrical section. Like I said I'm not familiar with Berio's duets and don't know exactly what you were going for, but I think more sustained notes on at least on part would have been effective. If nothing else, it adds to the possible contrapuntal nature of duets.