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CD UPC: 0095115527023
Release Date: September 2022
Originally recorded in February 2022
Alban Berg
James Ehnes
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis
Brian Pidgeon
Ralph Couzens
Alexander James
Watford Colosseum
Violin
Orchestral & Concertos
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Notes
Born in 1885, Alban Berg was one of the most significant composers of the Second Viennese School, whose output proved tremendously influential in the development of music in the twentieth century. He was a student of Schoenberg, who found that his juvenile compositions were almost exclusively written for voice; his natural ability to write lyrical melodic lines (even in later life while following the restrictions of twelve-tone serialism) probably remained the most outstanding quality of his style. His Op. 1 Piano Sonata was the fulfilment of a task set by Schoenberg to write non-vocal music. The Passacaglia, written between the sonata and World War I was only completed in short-score, and may have been intended to form part of a larger work. Both pieces are recorded here in skilful orchestrations by Sir Andrew Davis. The Three Orchestral Pieces were composed alongside his first great masterpiece, Wozzeck, and could be seen as a tribute to his musical hero, Mahler. The Violin Concerto, from 1935, was commissioned by the American violinist Louis Krasner, but was inspired by the premature death (from polio) of Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, hence the subtitle ‘to the memory of an angel’. It proved to be one of the composer’s final works as Berg died later that year as the result of an abscess from an insect sting.
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Reviews
*** Good Album
Orchestral Choice
Performance ***** Recording *****
“James Ehnes gives a hauntingly elegiac account Berg’s Violin Concerto… Davis’s own orchestration of Berg’s single-movment Op. 1 Piano Sonata throws the music’s lush Romanticism into relief… The Passacaglia, written some years after the Sonata … make us think of Berg’s first opera … The orchestral piece remains a fragment, but it is one that leaves a lasting impression.”
“… the BBC Symphony are on fine form. When it comes to the Violin Concerto, theirs is an unhurried reading, with James Ehnes sweet-toned and not afraid to linger in the opening bars, where violin and harp trade arpeggios from which Berg fashions his tone-row…”
“… This is an expansive reading, always ready to stop and smell the flowers along the way, but never losing sight of its sure narrative line. The orchestral playing is exceptional, and the recorded sound beautifully clear.”
Recording of the Month
“… This is a remarkable disc. I enjoyed the two transcribed works, which genuinely add to our appreciation and understanding of Alban Berg’s earlier achievement. The performance of the two works of genius – the Three Pieces for orchestra and the Violin Concerto – are revelatory in their sympathy and understanding. It is an album that all enthusiasts of the composer must own.”
“…it’s the performance of Berg’s last completed work, the Violin Concerto, which is the real heart of the CD. The soloist James Ehnes gives a rapt tender glow to the solo part, revealing many telling details that often pass by unnoticed. “To the memory of an angel” was the dedication Berg inscribed on his manuscript, referring to the death of the Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius. Though Manon herself was no angel, the piece certainly acquires – after passing through much anger and sorrow – an angelic quality. One could think of this piece as the radiant counterpart to Lulu. There, love and goodness are barely glimpsed through the sleaze; here, in this wonderful performance, they shine out perfectly.” *****
“Enormously rewarding, this disc sets Andrew Davis’s insightful and revelatory orchestrations of the Piano Sonata and Passacaglia beside Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces, Op 6 — the BBC Symphony Orchestra on fine form … Fascinating.” ****
“… This new recording in splendid surround sound by James Ehnes and the BBCSO under Sir Andrew Davis is one of the most involving that the piece has ever received, and the fill-ups – the three Orchestral Pieces and Andrew Davis’ orchestration of the piano Sonata complete a desirable disc.”
“… this is a wonderfully idiomatic and accomplished Berg collection, with some outstanding playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.” ****
“…the concerto leaps out as the towering masterpiece it is, played with a relaxed, honeyed tone by the Canadian soloist James Ehnes. Refusing to recognise difficulty, Ehnes plays it as late-romanticism rather than ultra-modernism, an approach that makes revelatory sense of the Lulu snippets and the liberal Bach quotations. Davis and the BBC provide lashings of empathy in one of the finest Berg interpretations I can remember.” ****
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