SACDs - Berg

Music in the early 20th century did pass from one medium to another, from late Romanticism into an unknown future. Refractions allows the listener to sample this transition through the choral music of four very different composers.

Both of the works on this CD have opera connections. The Henze is derived from instrumental interludes in his opera Das verratene Meer (The Sea Betrayed). The Berg Suite is Five Symphonic Pieces from the opera “Lulu”. Appassionatamente plus is a live recording from May of 2010.

Berg’s chamber music version of the Strauss waltz ‘Wine Women and Song’, Op.333 is considered one of the curiosa of his oeuvre, and even today is seldom performed. Coupled here with Berg’s more substantial orchestral works, Christaner Iven is a great singer and is equally talented as an actress.

The works on the present SA-CDs span Berg’s creative career from his first published piece, the Piano Sonata, Op. 1, here performed in the orchestration by Theo Verbey, to the Violin Concerto and the Symphonic Pieces from the Opera ‘Lulu’, the last works that were fully completed when Berg died at the age of fifty in 1935.

The Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen performs the Violin Concerto, for which she is well known. The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote last year: ‘Van Keulen brought Manon Gropius vividly to life in the concerto, matching her tone and expression to each episode; flighty and cheerful in the first, plucky and aggressive in the second, serenely resigned at the end, where Berg quotes a Bach chorale. The enigmatic folksong woven into both movements (hardly Bachian with its risqué text) had a mysterious feel, and van Keulen tied it all up in a performance as narrative as it was nimble.’

This comprehensive collection, performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (the National Orchestra of Sweden) under its former Principal Conductor Mario Venzago, is released on two Surround-Sound hybrid SA-CDs. It is the only available Berg collection on SA-CD and sold at the price of a single SA-CD.

The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra recently made its debut on Chandos with a disc of concertos by Weinberg, which was widely praised.

Since taking audiences by storm in his first appearance with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in April 2004, conductor Daniele Gatti has been a regular and welcome guest with the orchestra. His concert performances are characterised by highly individual interpretations of traditional orchestral repertoire and a fondness for less common repertoire, with a particular preference for the Second Viennese School and related movements. On this CD, Gatti's first recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, he conducts two key works by Alban Berg: the early Drei Orchesterstücke and the suite from the unfinished opera Lulu, Berg's swansong. Under his baton, both works, which Gatti conducted from memory in these concerts, are given highly ominous, atmospheric performances.