Restoration Carol Berg

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.

Karajan reportedly felt so strongly about his recordings of the Second Viennese School that he agreed to finance them himself when DG balked at picking up the tab. These are great performances, to be sure. Indeed, there may be some others that are comparable, but none are superior. The Berg pieces never have sounded so decadently beautiful, nor the Webern so passionately intense, or the Schoenberg so, well, just plain listenable. The Berlin Philharmonic strings make their usual luscious sounds, but here the winds, brass, and even percussion rise to the occasion as well. And sonically these were always some of Karajan's best efforts. Essential, then, and a perfect way to get to know these three composers on a single disc.

Espen Berg Trio is an award-winning piano trio from Norway. Outselling concert halls in Tokyo, Guangzhou, Kyoto and Hong Kong, the trio is already making a mark way outside their home country and was declared an important new voice in the crowded field of post-E.S.T. trios by Jazz Journal (UK) in 2019. Their music might bring associations to Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett, Shai Maestro or Tigran Hamasyan, but is primarily a personal addition to the legacy of the piano trio and the evolution of the Nordic jazzscene, lead by a combination of strong melodies, rhythmic complexity, immense technical abilities and a playful interaction.

Recordings that include strings quartets by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are common, but an album that includes music for quartet and voice by each of them is a rarity. Schoenberg's Second String Quartet, with a part for soprano in its third and fourth movements, is standard repertoire, but the version of Berg's Lyric Suite with a vocal part in the final movement is highly unusual, and Webern's bagatelle with voice, an unpublished movement apparently once intended to be part of the Six Bagatelles, Op. 9, receives what is probably its first recording. Novelty aside, the high standards of these performances make this a formidable release. Founded just before the turn of the millennium, Quatuor Diotima plays with the assurance and mutual understanding of a seasoned ensemble. The quartet has a lean, clean sound and the ensemble is immaculate, playing with exquisite expressiveness, an ideal combination for this repertoire.

The violin concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg are, on the surface, more different from one another than two compositions could ever probably be. Yet both stand as titans within the violin repertoire and broke incredibly significant new ground. Beethoven's lone Violin Concerto was different than anything that came before it and set the tone for virtually every concerto written after it for nearly a century.

In his autobiography Opera Years Rolf Liebermann wrote: “Of all the film versions of operas in which I was involved, my favourite has always been Wozzeck, mainly because the interpreters and location were so convincingly authentic.” And truly, this film adoption of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, recorded in 1970, fascinated with its constantly developing tension from the first tone to the last accord. Indeed the cast could not has been any better than in this production: Toni Blankenheim as Wozzeck and Sena Jurinac as Marie. Clearly and precisely in picture and speech, this film can truly be considered a classic and is now available on DVD for the first time.