Webern's Vibe

Started by karlhenning, April 02, 2008, 12:44:20 PM

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Mirror Image

This is the image I used for my Schoenberg t-shirt:

vers la flamme

Quote from: Mirror Image on December 30, 2019, 04:53:41 PM
One of my all-time favorite works is Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. For me, it is better than anything that has come before and after in his oeuvre. I'm a huge fan of this middle period or as it's been called 'free atonal period' where there's no rules and is completely up in the air as far as where the music goes. Five Pieces for Orchestra resonates deeply for me because you can hear a composer that knows he can no longer accept the German/Austrian tradition (even though he never truly abandoned it and, ironically, felt he was a part of the same lineage as Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, etc.). Schoenberg, of course, never fully turned his back on tonality and many of his works embraced it. He's actually not difficult to crack at all, but he does require much listening in order to fully assimilate everything that is happening in his music. I, too, prefer the string sextet arrangement of Verklärte Nacht, but I like the string orchestra arrangement as well.

Perhaps not in a general sense, but for me, he is, especially compared to supposedly "difficult" composers like Webern and Boulez who came to me very easily. It's much the same way that I feel about Brahms. His music is a constantly rewarding challenge, a puzzle for my brain to work together. It's all so layered, dense, and contrapuntal, and there is always so much going on as you allude to. For this reason it is extremely rewarding to repeated listens. I feel the same way about late Webern, but again, I find it much more simple on a fundamental level.

Speaking of late Webern, I got two CDs today that contain recordings of the piano variations. I'm listening to one of them now...:

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Pretty damn good recording, I think. More fiery than my preferred recording, from a young Idil Biret.

This is the other one I got:

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Have yet to hear it, but the Schoenberg on there is pretty damn solid!

vers la flamme

Quote from: Mirror Image on December 30, 2019, 05:03:33 PM
This is the image I used for my Schoenberg t-shirt:

Awesome, I love that self-portrait. Schoenberg was one hell of a painter!


San Antone

Quote from: vers la flamme on December 30, 2019, 05:13:28 PM
This is the other one I got:

[asin]B00000JYTV[/asin]

Have yet to hear it, but the Schoenberg on there is pretty damn solid!

That Peter Hill recording is very good, IMO.  It has become my go-to recording for the solo piano music of these composers.

staxomega

Quote from: vers la flamme on December 30, 2019, 05:13:28 PM
Perhaps not in a general sense, but for me, he is, especially compared to supposedly "difficult" composers like Webern and Boulez who came to me very easily. It's much the same way that I feel about Brahms. His music is a constantly rewarding challenge, a puzzle for my brain to work together. It's all so layered, dense, and contrapuntal, and there is always so much going on as you allude to. For this reason it is extremely rewarding to repeated listens. I feel the same way about late Webern, but again, I find it much more simple on a fundamental level.

Speaking of late Webern, I got two CDs today that contain recordings of the piano variations. I'm listening to one of them now...:

[asin]B000001GQK[/asin]

Pretty damn good recording, I think. More fiery than my preferred recording, from a young Idil Biret.

This is the other one I got:

[asin]B00000JYTV[/asin]

Have yet to hear it, but the Schoenberg on there is pretty damn solid!

How do you think Op. 27 variations from Peter Hill compares to Pollini? Glenn Gould's are also really good if you haven't heard them.

Leo K.

Been listening to various recordings of Webern's Symphony, Op.21. Perhaps my favorite symphony of all time, or close. Right now I'm playing Robert Craft's account on Naxos. Earlier I played Takuo Yuasa's account, also on Naxos. I have no direct favorite recording as they each look at this work with a valid interpretation.

Lisztianwagner

Webern is still the toughest nut of the Second Viennese School to crack for me, but his music has an aspect I admire, I mean, the quality of concentrating the expressive power and the inspiring intent into a small form, that in any case is able to be meaningful and inventive, in an aphoristic way; as a matter of fact, works like Variations Op. 30, the Piano Variations, Five and Six Orchestral Pieces and the Concerto Op. 24 are short, but suggestive, with an essential, but effective orchestration. His fragmented textures, developed through a wide trimbric variety, are quite thrilling too.
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." - Gustav Mahler

Mandryka

#147
Quote from: Leo K. on October 06, 2022, 08:08:55 AM
Been listening to various recordings of Webern's Symphony, Op.21. Perhaps my favorite symphony of all time, or close.

Yes I can understand why you might say that. Did you see that Heinz Holliger released a recording of it a couple of months ago? I'm not sure I like what he makes of it but maybe . . .
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Leo K.

Quote from: Mandryka on October 16, 2022, 08:26:05 PM
Yes I can understand why you might say that. Did you see that Heinz Holliger released a recording of it a couple of months ago? I'm not sure I like what he makes of it but maybe . . .
I was not aware of the new Holliger recording so thanks very much! I will check it out for sure.

Mandryka

#149
Holliger really slows things down. It's extraordinary how fresh the music sounds in all its uncomfortable strangeness. Timeless I guess. There's an early recording by Craft which I like very much.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Leo K.

Quote from: Mandryka on October 17, 2022, 01:22:12 PM
Holliger really slows things down. It's extraordinary how fresh the music sounds in all its uncomfortable strangeness. Timeless I guess. There's an early recording by Craft which I like very much.
It seems Eliahu Inbal stretched the first movement out too (on the Denon label) - very transfixing account, like walking in Kafka's world. Yes I love the strangeness and the almost-reference to Mahler's 9 (the beginning) so it looks backward too.

Mandryka

Quote from: Leo K. on October 20, 2022, 10:39:52 AM
It seems Eliahu Inbal stretched the first movement out too (on the Denon label) - very transfixing account, like walking in Kafka's world. Yes I love the strangeness and the almost-reference to Mahler's 9 (the beginning) so it looks backward too.

Thanks for that, I'm listening now and I like it very much.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Atriod

#152
Robert Craft is getting a big Sony mega box of recordings. I wrote this box off based off my impressions of the 4 CD Webern set which I immediately ordered without streaming given the lack of Webern recordings. My first (and only) impression was not so favorable, Craft is a literalist almost to a fault. Contrast this to Boulez on DG that would paint these sparse, haunting images in pieces like the cantatas that made me immediately fall for Webern. I'm open to revisiting this Craft set again.

Someone on another board says the Schoenberg is the main highlight of the upcoming 44 disc Craft box and up until now these have never been on digital so I'd only be able to hear them if someone transferred their LP and uploaded it to you Youtube. I find Craft a fine conductor of Schoenberg and Stravinsky on Naxos and enjoyed two of his books on Stravinsky, he is clearly someone that understands this music.


vers la flamme

Quote from: Atriod on May 28, 2023, 07:07:42 AMRobert Craft is getting a big Sony mega box of recordings. I wrote this box off based off my impressions of the 4 CD Webern set which I immediately ordered without streaming given the lack of Webern recordings. My first (and only) impression was not so favorable, Craft is a literalist almost to a fault. Contrast this to Boulez on DG that would paint these sparse, haunting images in pieces like the cantatas that made me immediately fall for Webern. I'm open to revisiting this Craft set again.

Someone on another board says the Schoenberg is the main highlight of the upcoming 44 disc Craft box and up until now these have never been on digital so I'd only be able to hear them if someone transferred their LP and uploaded it to you Youtube. I find Craft a fine conductor of Schoenberg and Stravinsky on Naxos and enjoyed two of his books on Stravinsky, he is clearly someone that understands this music.



I was going to get this until I saw a few unfavorable reviews similar to your own, after which my interest waned. Webern is one of my favorite composers, so I do think I ought to hear this eventually, but there is so much music to hear and so little time, so we'll see when.

However, I am very interested to hear Inbal's take on Webern.

Atriod

#154
Reinvigorated in my prior indifference for Eschanbach performances (main issue his tempo choices though he often makes it work) after hearing a stunning Mahler Symphony 5 from him I decided to look for some Eschenbach recordings I haven't heard before which lead me to discovering his Koch recording of Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande and Webern's Passacaglia. In that search I came across this well thought out opinion of Webern's Passacaglia which is precisely how I hear it, I could possibly even agree with the author saying that it might have sounded like Mahler's 11th symphony :)

I also feel like Schönberg and Berg were still romantics composing in a new idiom whereas other than the Passacaglia Webern (and Boulez more so!) completely divorced himself from this. My logical progression of how I see them as Wagner, Mahler (explored dissonance later on, departed from unmemorable classical prose or writing symphonies that who knows you could throw a dart at it could be any one of said composer's), Schönberg (still inspired by Brahms and Wagner) and lastly Webern and Boulez.

I don't quite share the same enthusiasm as the author for Eschenbach's performance of the Passacaglia. Pelleas und Melisande is very good, good enough that I'll see about making a post about it. The insanely good Mahler 5 will definitely be written up once I have heard it a few more times. For Passacaglia I continue to prefer Karajan and Boulez (Berlin or Lucerne Festival Academy of the four recordings). Eschenbach comfortably hangs with fine versions like Dohnányi.

QuoteWebern's Passacaglia makes an ideal coupling with Pelleas. Composed some five years later, it plumbs and reveals a similar psycho-emotional territory, despite important differences in approach. Both works are products of considerable intellectual discipline, but while Schoenberg's displays a Straussian robustness, opulence, and generosity, Webern's is brief highly concentrated, a kaleidoscopic sequence of emotional states of exquisitely horrifying intensity. A brilliant product of the sort of sensibility that used to be termed "neurasthenic," the work conveys a feeling of hysterical anxiety in dread of imminent catastrophe that often suggests late Mahler who was writing his Ninth Symphony at the time). In fact, the Passacaglia often sounds as if it were Mahler's Eleventh Symphony condensed into fourteen minutes. As someone who firmly believes that the works of Webern's maturity represent one of the most inauspicious dead-ends in all of music, I nevertheless feel that this Op. 1, written when the composer was twenty-five, is a masterpiece of the period. Both these works are truly of their time — a time when the fundamental emotions underlying and motivating human behavior were addressed by the arts with greater insight and sensitivity than they had been before or have been since Eschenbach's readings are both highly expressive and deeply analytical, although the Houston Symphony may not project the sense of spiritual authenticity as thoroughly as do Karajan's recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic (now available only within a three-disc set). But these are meticulously executed, subtly nuanced interpretations, which benefit significantly from a recording technique that provides extraordinary transparency of detail without compromising richness of sonority, thus enabling striking orchestral effects to be heard more clearly than they usually do on recording, let alone in live performances, where they are usually lost completely. Steve Smith's intelligent and informed program notes are a further enhancement. This disc is strongly recommended to aficionados of late-romantic music who might have avoided these works because of a reflexive aversion to the composers' names.

Source: https://walter-simmons.com/writings/343

vers la flamme

Favorite recordings of Webern's complete string quartets?

Luke

I like this one




Lisztianwagner

I'll vote for the Neues Leipziger Streichquartett too.
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." - Gustav Mahler

DavidW


Atriod

The best performances I've heard are from Quatuor Diotima and Arditti Quartet.