Contemporary Classics June 5, 2018 Alban Berg

This episode is a celebration of the music of composer Alban Berg.  This past weekend at Spoleto USA festival  presented a concert entitled "You Are Mine Own" which featured Berg's Lyric Suite.  That is the inspiration for this episode.

Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite is a six-movement work for string quartet composed between 1925 and 1926.  It uses methods derived from Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.  While parts adhere to the 12 tone methodology, much is based upon other techniques.  Much of the first, third and sixth movements are in the 12 tone methodology.  But even here he uses it in an atypical manner. 

For instance in the first movement which is in sonata form, Berg goes directly from exposition to recapitulation without a specific development section.  However the variation tone rows within the exposition and recapitulation provide for the development within each of these sections.

The third movement is in ABA form.  In this movement, the outer sections of the Allegro misterioso present the same music forwards and then backwards.  The central section Trio ecstatico is through-composed without repetition of elements.

The last movement, Largo Desolato, was both composed as a song without words and in a version for soprano set to a text by Baudelaire in Stefan George's German translation.  Berg during his lifetime suppressed the vocal version.  Some say that when originally performed, the vocal version was compared to Schoenberg’s 2^nd String Quartet which also has a vocalist.  In this performance by the Emerson String Quartet we hear Renee Fleming in the final movement.  As you listen, note how the vocal line buried in the instrumental parts.

 

Alban Berg assembled his Lulu Suite for orchestra and soprano in 1934. This suite involves music from his opera Lulu, which was still incomplete when the composer died prematurely at the age of fifty in the following year. The opera's short score was already finished, and the first two acts were completely orchestrated. It was from these first two acts that the music for the concert suite was drawn. It is in five movements.  Earlier in his career, Berg had created a similar assemblage from his first opera, entitled Three Fragments from Wozzeck, but the Lulu Suite is better known and more frequently recorded. This is perhaps because the latter work is more diverse.

There is a lot to hear in this suite, making it more than a contracted showcase intended to get an audience to the actual opera. It is an outstanding work in its own right.  Among the themes from the opera, a soprano presents the Lied der Lulu from Act II of the opera in the third movement of the concert suite. In the fifth movement, the soprano also performs a brief excerpt from the role of Countess Geschwitz.

Berg’s Violin Concerto piece was a commission from the violinist Louis Krasner. When he first received the commission, Berg was working on his opera Lulu, and he did not begin work on the concerto for some months. The event that spurred him into writing was the death by polio of 18-year-old Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler (once Gustav Mahler's wife) and Walter Gropius. Berg set Lulu aside to write the concerto, which he dedicated "To the memory of an angel".

Berg worked on the piece very quickly, completing it within a few months; it is thought that his working on the concerto was largely responsible for his failing to complete Lulu before his death on 24 December 1935. The violin concerto was the last work that Berg completed. In a letter to Krasner dated 16 July 1935, Berg confessed: “Yesterday I finished the composition [without the orchestration] of our Violin Concerto. I am probably more surprised by it than you will be (...) the work gave me more and more joy. I hope - no, I have the confident belief - that I have succeeded.”

The Violin Concerto is It is in two movements, each divided into two sections: 1^st movement:   Andante (Prelude) & Allegretto (Scherzo); the 2^nd movement Allegro (Cadenza) & Adagio (Chorale Variations)

The work begins with an Andante in classical sonata form, followed by the Allegretto, a dance-like section. The second movement starts with an Allegro largely based on a single recurring rhythmic cell; this section has been described as cadenza-like, with very difficult passages in the solo part. The orchestration becomes rather violent at its climax (which is literally marked in the score as "High point of the Allegro"); the fourth and final section, marked Adagio, is in a much calmer mood. The first two sections are meant to represent life, the last two death and transfiguration.

Like a number of other works by Berg, the piece combines the twelve tone technique, typical of serialistic music learned from his teacher Arnold Schoenberg with passages written in a freer, more tonal style. The score integrates serialism and tonality in a remarkable fashion

Berg’s Wozzeck was composed between 1914 and 1922, and is centered on the interactions between soldiers and residents of a small German speaking village. Prominent themes of militarism, callousness, social exploitation, and a casual sadism are brutally and uncompromisingly presented.

Three arias from Act 1

Wozzeck, a soldier, shaves the Captain, who is espousing his righteous philosophy. He accuses Wozzeck of immoral ways by living with his mistress and child without the benefit of marriage. Wozzeck states that he could live virtuously if only he were rich.

Roman Trekel, Baritone, Wozzeck and Marc Molomot, Tenor as the captain in this live recording by Houston Symphony & Hans Graf

Later, as Wozzeck gathers wood with his friend Andres, he has frightening visions.  These hallucinations appear to be the result of taking an experimental treatment so he can get money to support his mistress Marie. Roman Trekel, Baritone, Wozzeck & Robert McPherson, Tenor, Andres

And then from the end of act I we have Marie succumbing to the advances of a Drum-major and sleeping with him.      Anne Schwanewilms, Soprano, Marie; Gordon Gietz, Tenor Drum-major