Alban Berg (1885-1935)

Started by bhodges, August 15, 2007, 08:28:16 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

not edward

Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 12:00:21 PM
It's a great question [Edward's, I mean]....and I don't know the answer OTTOMH! Der Wein has that D minor-ish row; the Chamber Concerto's row has a few mellifluous thirds and triads in it; the Violin Concerto's clearly is full of strong tonal pulls...but the quasi-row as used in the passacaglia scene of Wozzeck is fairly free of triads IIRC.

Ha - just pulled up this page: basic rows for the works of the Second Viennese composers. My recollections of the rows basically echoed here, I think.
Great link, thanks, and does pretty much answer my question. :)
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

karlhenning

You know it's been too long since you've listened to the Berg Violin Concerto, if you've forgotten that there's an alto saxophone in the score.

Mirror Image

#42
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 07, 2010, 12:22:06 PM
You know it's been too long since you've listened to the Berg Violin Concerto, if you've forgotten that there's an alto saxophone in the score.

Berg's "Violin Concerto" was the work that got me into Berg. It's brutal, tragic, full of sadness, anxious, nervous, but then when those explosions of brass happen in the second movement I just felt complete. It was as though I've heard this music all along I just didn't have the necessary ears to hear it. I feel so bad that I've put it off for so long. My reference recording is, of course, Anne Sophie Mutter/Levine/CSO on DG. That performance is the best I've heard.



Anyone who doesn't own this recording and calls themselves a classical fan should be ashamed of themselves, I know I would be.

karlhenning

It's a tougher man than I would brand a wolf.

Sid

I have Isaac Stern's performance of the Violin Concerto, made in the '50's with the NYPO under Bernstein & it's pretty good. Most people know that it's kind of like a requiem for the daughter of two of Berg's friends, but the liner notes also relate an interesting story vis a vis the gestation of the work. Berg incorporates a Viennese waltz theme in the first movement (he loved J. Strauss), and to balance that there is turmoil at the beginning of the second movement followed by a calming quotation of a chorale by J. S. Bach. Berg asked his publisher to send him a Bach score, and they ended up sending him the exact cantata (No. 60, if I remember correctly?) that he had begun to quote in the conclusion. This was obviously an unconscious thing he did, but the coincidence is pretty uncanny (if it was written in a novel or related in a movie, you'd think it's fiction).

I would like to see this work done live, but I'm gearing up to see Berg's Chamber Concerto as well as the first string quartet played live here in Sydney in coming months...

Mirror Image

Quote from: Sid on July 07, 2010, 06:36:48 PM
I have Isaac Stern's performance of the Violin Concerto, made in the '50's with the NYPO under Bernstein & it's pretty good. Most people know that it's kind of like a requiem for the daughter of two of Berg's friends, but the liner notes also relate an interesting story vis a vis the gestation of the work. Berg incorporates a Viennese waltz theme in the first movement (he loved J. Strauss), and to balance that there is turmoil at the beginning of the second movement followed by a calming quotation of a chorale by J. S. Bach. Berg asked his publisher to send him a Bach score, and they ended up sending him the exact cantata (No. 60, if I remember correctly?) that he had begun to quote in the conclusion. This was obviously an unconscious thing he did, but the coincidence is pretty uncanny (if it was written in a novel or related in a movie, you'd think it's fiction).

I would like to see this work done live, but I'm gearing up to see Berg's Chamber Concerto as well as the first string quartet played live here in Sydney in coming months...

Here is an interesting article from Wikipedia about his "Violin Concerto":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_Concerto_(Berg)

I've been reading more about Berg's life and it certainly is fascinating to read about his metamorphasis from a complete musical novice to a composer of significance. His "Piano Sonata" was the first work that brought him attention, but it was "Wozzeck" that brought him critical acclaim.

Here is an ideal concert program for me that I would love to see off the top of my head:

1. Webern: Im Sommerwind
2. Berg: Violin Concerto
3. Schoenberg: Gurrelieder

James Levine, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Violin Soloist: Anne Sophie Mutter

This would be pretty incredible for me. I still have to figure out who the vocal soloists would be in this performance of "Gurrelieder" though.


Mirror Image

Quote from: mjwal on July 07, 2010, 05:58:57 AM
Apart from the operas I must say that my private favourite of all his works is the Altenberglieder - amazingly concentrated, sensuous - and (for me) heart-opening in the last song. On comparing the three recordings I own I had to vote in favour of the Boulez recording on CBS LP, where I find Boulez at his best and the singer - Halina Lukomska - far more expressive in the way she sings the German language than either Margaret Price w/Abbado or Vlatka Orsanic w/Gielen, which I slightly prefer orchestrally - but the Lukomska version seems not to be on CD. I have not heard the Jessye Norman w/Boulez, but am ordering it. If she does a Strauss overkill on it it is a pity - I'll wait and see. It was amusing to read some reviewer in Fanfare (I think - it was on the net) recently call this work "twelve-tone", which of course it isn't, though it does use a 12-tone series melodically at one point; ironically, it seems to have been this work that Schoenberg singled out for severe criticism among his pupil's recent productions. He was himself some years away from developing the dodecaphonic system then...Stravinsky also seems to have held Berg's Op.4 in high regard: in one of the Craft/Strav. dialogue books he discourses eloquently on the piece, as I remember.

I have Boulez's Altenberglieder as well as both of Abbado's (Price and Otter). I haven't heard the Boulez yet. There's a box set that has just been released of Boulez conducting Berg on Sony, which most people already bought individually, but I got such a fantastic deal on this box that I couldn't pass it up.

Anyway, Altenberglieder is a great work. I think I'm more partial to Berg's Seven Early Songs though. I think these are just so gorgeous and of course I'm talking about the version which Berg orchestrated. Absolutely beautiful.

mjwal

Having now listened to the Boulez/Norman CD, I must say I find the Sieben frühe Lieder pretty (and) vacuous; Norman's voice is under strain, and the orchestral accompaniment, though in itself richly masterful, blows up these high-class Strauss imitations to unmanageable proportions, continually sounding overladen (over-miked?). A couple of years earlier in Op.4 she was in better, in fact beautiful voice and the recording sounds better. I like this, but I think I like Gielen/Orsanic a tad better; the orchestra sounds more acerbic, less like a prolongation of the stale cream puffery of the early songs (however attractive to the sweet tooth it may be). Swings and roundabouts in this, but it was definitely worth getting the Boulez/Norman disc for this alone. It certainly points up the closeness of Berg's compositorial voice here to his eventual post-romantic/serial synthesis in Lulu. I still like the earlier Boulez/Lukomska best in the Altenberg-Lieder (CBS LP). The Jugendlieder are charming, if insignificant - Norman actually sounds better here several years after the Sieben frühe Lieder sessions, able to manage her voice better with a piano accompaniment. - I admit I am exaggerating a little for effect in my characterisations, but not much.
The Violin's Obstinacy

It needs to return to this one note,
not a tune and not a key
but the sound of self it must depart from,
a journey lengthily to go
in a vein it knows will cripple it.
...
Peter Porter

Sid

Can anyone shed some light on the Chamber Concerto? I'll be seeing it done live here in Sydney in October. I just listened to it on cd last night, and it's beginning to make sense, but it still sounds pretty wierd (that's ok, I like wierd!). It was written to celebrate the friendship between Berg, Webern & Schoenberg (& for the latter's 50th birthday). The musical form of their names appear in the first movement, a theme and variations.

The odd scoring of this work reminds me strongly of Janacek's Capriccio for piano left hand and winds. Some of the quirky sounds are similar too. Some of the passages played by the violin remind me of a donkey! I suspect that with repeated listening I will come some way to understanding it. But I'm not going to hold my breath, I've been listening to the Lyric Suite for string quartet for 15 years, and can't really make head nor tail of it. But I enjoy it & that's what counts for me.

Here is the wikipedia article on Berg's Chamber Concerto, which explains the work pretty well, but I would like to get people's personal reactions & interpretations of the work as well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammerkonzert

karlhenning

I first heard the piece broadcast on radio, so this was back in the days when WQXR New York was not yet a toothless bearded hag.  The Chamber Concerto electrified me on first hearing.

Sid

I couldn't really comprehend either Berg's Violin Concerto or his Chamber Concerto upon first hearing them. The both seemed pretty hard to understand at first. The latter, I feel, is still pretty bewildering. But it's not the type of music that I would listen to repeatedly in a short space of time - I like to spread out my listening of "complex" works like this over a longer period. That way, I can go away and think about them, and then come back to them with some more solid ideas as to what he wanted to get across in these works. But these two works are just like night and day, one of them a requiem, the other a birthday present. They were also written about ten years apart, the Chamber Concerto is (if I am not mistaken?) more strictly serial, whilst the Violin Concerto is much freer in it's treatment of the 12 note system. But one thing that I can hear in common is that both use the Viennese waltz, which Berg loved, he was a huge fan of Johann Strauss II. The Violin Concerto comes around full circle, with the tuning up phrase/theme returning, whilst the Chamber Concerto seems to end in an almost unexpected (and bizarre?) way...

karlhenning

Do you know, with each hearing, I was gradually more and more convinced by the ending of its rightness.

The Kammerkonzert really does take some living with; and I am with you, in that it is substantial enough, and 'hermetic' enough, that I need space between hearings . . . I could not do the three hearings in a day drill which I might do with many another piece.


Over the decades, I've done a pendulum swing with the piece, too: as reported, I was really pumped about the piece the first I heard it (might attribute part of that to the fact that here was this half-hour's piece of unrelenting atonality, coming right off the radio back in the days of analog).  Some years later, the fact that I couldn't quite make head or tail of it turned my ears against the piece for . . . oh, several years.  But a couple of years ago (as part of a general trend I favor of going back to hear pieces, just in case, you know) I revisited the piece, and it was like hearing it again for the first time.

mjwal

I could never relate to the Kammerkonzert on recordings - I still can't - but a few years ago I attended a concert by the Ensemble Modern and it all came together and made perfect sense (as Carter's Double Concerto had on another occasion with the EM). Alas, my memory is too bad to be able to recall why, (apart from perfect clarity, balance, phrasing) - but I do know now that the work can make such an effect.
The Violin's Obstinacy

It needs to return to this one note,
not a tune and not a key
but the sound of self it must depart from,
a journey lengthily to go
in a vein it knows will cripple it.
...
Peter Porter


Mirror Image


snyprrr

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 30, 2010, 04:19:21 AM
Do you know, with each hearing, I was gradually more and more convinced by the ending of its rightness.

The Kammerkonzert really does take some living with; and I am with you, in that it is substantial enough, and 'hermetic' enough, that I need space between hearings . . . I could not do the three hearings in a day drill which I might do with many another piece.


Over the decades, I've done a pendulum swing with the piece, too: as reported, I was really pumped about the piece the first I heard it (might attribute part of that to the fact that here was this half-hour's piece of unrelenting atonality, coming right off the radio back in the days of analog).  Some years later, the fact that I couldn't quite make head or tail of it turned my ears against the piece for . . . oh, several years.  But a couple of years ago (as part of a general trend I favor of going back to hear pieces, just in case, you know) I revisited the piece, and it was like hearing it again for the first time.

Who's in the running on cd? I know there's Holliger/Telarc, and the famous DG, and probably a Gielen or something...

I'll have to YouTube it tomorrow.

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: snyprrr on October 05, 2010, 10:01:01 PM
Who's in the running on cd? I know there's Holliger/Telarc, and the famous DG, and probably a Gielen or something...

My favorite version, very lush and Romantic, with slower tempi than Boulez, is Sinopoli with the Dresden.

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

abidoful

#57
Quote from: Sid on July 29, 2010, 04:59:45 PM
Can anyone shed some light on the Chamber Concerto? I'll be seeing it done live here in Sydney in October. I just listened to it on cd last night, and it's beginning to make sense, but it still sounds pretty wierd (that's ok, I like wierd!). It was written to celebrate the friendship between Berg, Webern & Schoenberg (& for the latter's 50th birthday). The musical form of their names appear in the first movement, a theme and variations.

The odd scoring of this work reminds me strongly of Janacek's Capriccio for piano left hand and winds. Some of the quirky sounds are similar too. Some of the passages played by the violin remind me of a donkey! I suspect that with repeated listening I will come some way to understanding it. But I'm not going to hold my breath, I've been listening to the Lyric Suite for string quartet for 15 years, and can't really make head nor tail of it. But I enjoy it & that's what counts for me.

Here is the wikipedia article on Berg's Chamber Concerto, which explains the work pretty well, but I would like to get people's personal reactions & interpretations of the work as well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammerkonzert
First I found the Chamber Concerto sort of dry and aggressive sounding- actually i haven't heard a recording of it  that i like absolutely;I have only one that of Boulez with Daniel Baremboim at the piano.

I like it becouse I'm a pianist and fascinated of everything that Berg wrote fot the piano. I don't think the first movement piano solo cadenza should sound brutal. But sensuos and lyrical! And i think it's a humorous (besides the 2nd movement) piece and  full of joy of music making--it sounds like a big band stuff! Sort of Jazz-like...!
The final movement should be played in it's entity, with the repeat IMO. I think it's more effective that way. Some recordings omit that repeat...! The ending IS great!

Mirror Image

Unbelieve that this incredible composer only has three pages here. What a shame, but in any event: BUMP!!!

bhodges

He's sort of one of my unofficial "three B's": Bartók, Berg and Britten.  Love too many works to count--by all three.

--Bruce