Alban Berg Concerto

With Kempe at the helm we can be assured of elevated and noble performances. The BBC Legends issue captures him in two concerts given four months apart. The February 1976 concert was given at the Royal Festival Hall and gives us not unexpected fare – Berg – and decidedly unusual repertoire for Kempe in the form of Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra. This positively crackles with rhythmic energy and dynamism, the strings responding with admirable precision and unanimity of attack. The result is a performance of real standing and a precious surviving example of Kempe’s small repertoire of British works.

Born in 1885, Alban Berg was one of the most significant composers of the Second Viennese School, whose output proved tremendously influential in the development of music in the twentieth century. He was a student of Schoenberg, who found that his juvenile compositions were almost exclusively written for voice; his natural ability to write lyrical melodic lines (even in later life while following the restrictions of twelve-tone serialism) probably remained the most outstanding quality of his style. His Op. 1 Piano Sonata was the fulfilment of a task set by Schoenberg to write non-vocal music. The Passacaglia, written between the sonata and World War I was only completed in short-score, and may have been intended to form part of a larger work.

En février 1935 Alban Berg reçoit la commande d'un concerto (pour violon). Deux mois plus tard, Manon, fille d'Alma Mahler et de Walter Gropius, meurt à l'âge de dix-huit ans.(…) (Une) septicémie … l'emportera à la fin de décembre. Prenant la valeur d'un double requiem, le Concerto « A la mémoire d'un ange » suscite une intense émotion lors de sa création, à Barcelone le 19 avril 1936 … Cette partition reste l'oeuvre de la seconde école de Vienne la plus jouée et aimée du grand public. A un portrait gracieux et joyeux de Manon (Andante - Allegretto), succède une musique plus dure incarnant la douleur puis la « transfiguration » (Allegro - Adagio), qu'engendre une citation du choral "Es ist genug". Soutenu par un Georges Prêtre aux petits soins, Christian Ferras en livre en janvier 1963 une vision sensuelle et passionnée, à fleur de peau, vraiment poignante. Le violoniste français domine avec une remarquable aisance la complexité du langage de Berg, dodécaphonique mais émaillé de réminiscences tonales.

The greatest of Mozart's wind serenades and the toughest of Alban Berg's major works might seem an unlikely pairing, but in an interview included with the sleeve notes for this release, Pierre Boulez points up their similarities. Both works are scored for an ensemble of 13 wind instruments (with solo violin and piano as well in the Berg) and both include large-scale variations as one of their movements - and Boulez makes the comparisons plausible enough in these lucid performances. It's rare to hear him conducting Mozart, too, and if the performance is a little brisker and more strait-laced than ideal, the EIC's phrasing is a model of clarity and good taste. It's the performance of the Berg, though, that makes this such an important issue; both soloists, Mitsuko Uchida and Christian Tetzlaff, are perfectly attuned to Boulez's approach - they have given a number of performances of the Chamber Concerto before - and the combination of accuracy and textural clarity with the highly wrought expressiveness that is the essence of Berg's music is perfectly caught.

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinist of his generation, Christian Tetzlaff, offers profound interpretations of two deeply dramatic and lyrical concertos - those of Brahms and Berg - together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Robin Ticciati.

The Schoenberg Quartet displays a great affinity for Alban Berg's chamber music. The larger string quartets are masterpieces of the twentieth century and are here played with a a wonderful understanding of their constant shifts in mood. The shorter pieces are also perfect and give a new way of looking at the larger works that they are normally a part of. The viola and piano sonata is a good transcription from the clarinet sonata and also adds a new dimension to the original version.

The Schoenberg Quartet displays a great affinity for Alban Berg's chamber music. The larger string quartets are masterpieces of the twentieth century and are here played with a a wonderful understanding of their constant shifts in mood. The shorter pieces are also perfect and give a new way of looking at the larger works that they are normally a part of. The viola and piano sonata is a good transcription from the clarinet sonata and also adds a new dimension to the original version.

The Schoenberg Quartet displays a great affinity for Alban Berg's chamber music. The larger string quartets are masterpieces of the twentieth century and are here played with a a wonderful understanding of their constant shifts in mood. The shorter pieces are also perfect and give a new way of looking at the larger works that they are normally a part of. The viola and piano sonata is a good transcription from the clarinet sonata and also adds a new dimension to the original version.

Early in 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner suggested to Berg that he write a violin concerto, but Berg, involved with the orchestration of his opera Lulu, was not then interested in a new project. However, the death from poliomelytis of his young friend Manon Gropius, daughter of Mahler’s widow, that spring so saddened him that he decided to compose a concerto as a memorial to her. Te score was finished on August 11, 1935 – record time for the slow-working, meticulous Berg. Dedicated ‘to the memory of an angel’ the Violin Concerto was to be his last completed work, for on December 24 he died of septicemia of the age of fifty. Krasner gave the world premiere on April 19, 1936, in Barcelona, under Hermann Scherchen.