Berg: Chamber Concerto; Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6; Violin Concerto

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
No doctrinaire theorist, Berg composed communicative, emotional music without compromising his technical sophistication and atonal allegiances. The Chamber Concerto has its knotty moments, but also considerable charms. Barenboim's big-hearted, romantic pianism plays off Gawriloff's tart violin, the piquant winds, and Boulez's controlled leadership. The Three Pieces is as close as Berg ever came to writing a symphony; its mix of powerful orchestral outbursts and elegant section writing are reminiscent of Berg's beloved Mahler. The Violin Concerto's ardent warmth and tender lyricism, expressing Berg's meditations on death and redemption (including a direct quote from a Bach cantata) after the untimely passing of Manon Gropius, make it irresistible. The fine performance offers an alternative view to classic older recordings by Louis Krasner and Isaac Stern. Including most of his key instrumental works, this disc is an ideal introduction to Berg's genius. --Dan Davis

Tracks:

Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Motto
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Thema scherzoso con variazoni
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Variation I
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Variation II - langsames Walzertempo
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Variation III - krig bewegt
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Variation IV - sehr rasch
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: Chamber Concerto: I. Variation V - tempo primo
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: II. Adagio
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: III. Rondo ritmico con introduzione: Introduzione
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: III. Rondo ritmico
Chamber Concerto For Piano And Violin With 13 Wind Instruments: III. Coda
Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6: I. Prdium. Langsam
Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6: II. Reigen. Anfangs etwas znd, leicht bewschwingt
Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6: III. Marsch. Mges Marschtempo
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra: I. Andante, Allegretto - London Symphony Orchestra
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra: II. Allegro, Adagio - London Symphony Orchestra

Amazon.com essential recording

No doctrinaire theorist, Berg composed communicative, emotional music without compromising his technical sophistication and atonal allegiances. The Chamber Concerto has its knotty moments, but also considerable charms. Barenboim's big-hearted, romantic pianism plays off Gawriloff's tart violin, the piquant winds, and Boulez's controlled leadership. The Three Pieces is as close as Berg ever came to writing a symphony; its mix of powerful orchestral outbursts and elegant section writing are reminiscent of Berg's beloved Mahler. The Violin Concerto's ardent warmth and tender lyricism, expressing Berg's meditations on death and redemption (including a direct quote from a Bach cantata) after the untimely passing of Manon Gropius, make it irresistible. The fine performance offers an alternative view to classic older recordings by Louis Krasner and Isaac Stern. Including most of his key instrumental works, this disc is an ideal introduction to Berg's genius. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

rich, alluring works of early modernism.......2002-08-28

This is a stunning record in every respect -- the compositions, performances, conducting, and recording -- a jewel of Boulez' many recordings for Sony. The "Violin Concerto" is the only piece here that has become part of the standard repertory, and the performance is beautiful, if not as well known as Mutter's. The "Chamber Concerto" is rigorously structured, and sounds more like Webern than the other two pieces. My favorite, though, is "Three Pieces for Orchestra," the closest Berg came to writing a symphony. This dramatic music blends the influence of Mahler with that of Schoenberg, which seems to be Berg's forte.

20th century masterworks!

Exemplary Berg.......2000-04-30

It remains to be seen how kindly history will judge Pierre Boulez the composer. However, by virtue of this release alone, his credentials as a conductor are the stuff of which legends are made. Of the atonalists, Berg is in some ways the most "messy." He was not as orthodox as his classmate Webern when it came to applying twelve note techniques. His music is dense, and hopelessly complex to be sure, but under Boulez's deft touch it also seems to live and breathe. Perhaps Boulez the composer has contributed much to the triumph that is Boulez the conductor. He unpacks this music as only someone who can also construct it might. The Three Orchestral pieces, which I have heard multiple times to varying degrees of satisfaction, is given a very sensible but appealing reading here. The Chamber Concerto, featuring Daniel Barenboim in the first of several recordings he would make of this piece under Boulez's baton, is also outstanding. Pinchas Zukerman gives a very credible reading of the Violin Concerto. For individuals on the fence about Berg, this recording should be required material. For those who already admire Berg, this recording does not need to be required because it will sell itself after even after the most casual of listenings. This recording is a testatment to the brilliance of one of this century's least understood composers, and the artisty of one of this century's greatest conductors.

Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music

Average customer rating:

BUT WHY?
Great Recordings
A must for lovers of modern music

Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music

Manufacturer: Col Legno
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Ballets | Ballets & Dances | Classical | Styles | Music

Trios | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Percussion | Instruments | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

Modern & 20th Century | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Choruses | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000038IDI
Release Date: 1999-11-15

Amazon.com

It starts, appropriately enough, with Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, which seems to hold its breath, and occasionally exhale in brief bursts of panic, as the new century unfolds. It ends with Dmitri Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony Op. 110a (based on his String Quartet No. 8), whose alternating sequences of anguish, alarm, and derision come as close as possible for absolute music to indicting its bloody history--eight CDs and over 30 works later.

Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music represents as fine a look back at musical modernism as you're likely to get. And in what a lavish package! A tall box holding two multi-CD jewel boxes and a beautifully printed booklet with photographs of modern and postmodern architecture and extensive liner notes (in German). Even the CDs themselves look handsome. All the more amazing when you realize that the entire set was digitally recorded live--with coughs, turning pages, chair creaks, and vivid sound--during one week in 1998 in Stuttgart (where, it seems, you have to travel nowadays even to hear about this kind of music), by such groups as the RSO Saarbrücken and the Bamberger Symphoniker, led by Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Gielen, Heinz Holliger, and other risk takers. Each CD has been programmed around a theme; for example, "Explosion/Implosion" (featuring Varèse and Mahler's tone poem Totenfeier, later becoming the first movement of his Second Symphony) and "Minimal Postludien," which includes (heads up, completists) Philip Glass's Echorus for two solo violins and string orchestra and Ligeti's Ramifications. Stravinsky, who, like Schoenberg and Cage, appears to cast a long shadow over this imposing collection, remains one of the highlights: a sharp, fiercely erotic performance of Le Sacre by Lothar Zagrosek and the Stattsorchester Stuttgart that helps remind us how much modern music has done, in the face of controversy and disaster, to ground us in our humanity. --Robert Burns Neveldine

Customer Reviews:

BUT WHY?.......2002-05-15

At eight cds, this could have been a hefty set of 20th century orchestral music. But somewhere along the line, around the beginning of planning the festival I'm guessing, something went horribly wrong. There were eight concerts, each with a theme. The pieces chosen have often only a tenuous connection with the theme, if any. There are no women composers. There are no composers from Romania. There are no composers from the Czech Republic. There are no composers from Poland. That means no Gubuidulina, no Ana-Marie Avram, no Joan Tower. That means no Dumitrescu or Janacek or Lutoslawski. Can you believe it? A collection of twentieth century orchestral music with no Lutoslawski? Verily it boggleth the mind.

But so what? Are the pieces they did play well played? Well, sometimes. Gielen and Zender get predictably excellent results. But much of the rest sounds for all the world like first reads. Extremely sensitive and polished first reads to be sure, but no sense of piece qua piece, a thing with a shape from start to finish. (This is most apparent in the eccentric phrasing.) These are not the newer pieces, either, but Ives and Ravel and Bartok and Stravinsky. You know these people have played these pieces dozens of times. No excuse.

It's hard to fault a company (Col legno) that puts out so many fine performances of the likes of Helmut Lachenmann, but in this venture I really think they dropped the ball.

Great Recordings.......2000-12-30

I wish I could read in German! This is the only "flaw" of this edition, in my opinion: it seems to have a great booklet, but I can't read it. Otherwise, it is a great collection: excelent recordings, good choice of works. I find it an excelent intro to modern music.

A must for lovers of modern music.......2000-06-26

This 8 CD collection contains a wonderfully diverse selection of works that trace the development of music through the century. This set contains music form the pivotal artists from the beginning of the century; Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, Ives and Varese. Master from later in the century include; Messiaen, Carter, Boulez, Cage, Feldman, Kurtag, Schnittke, Glass, and Ligeti. From the late romanticism of Mahler, to the impressionism of Ravel and Debussy, the atonality of the Second Viennese, the neo-styles of Stravinsky, Kurtag, Schostakovich, and Schnittke, to the minimalism of Glass, this collection has it all. Also within this collection are some classic compositions by lesser known masters such as; Maderna, Nono, Kagel. Rihm, Zimmerman, Furrer, and Lachenmann to name a few. Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Gielen, Heinze Holliger, and Hans Zender conduct superb performances of most of these classics. There is much to cherich in this collection, and are many treasures to be discovered.

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