Berg: Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with 13 Wind Instruments (Kammerkonzert)

Vienna's eighteenth- and twentieth-century musical worlds meet: Pierre Boulez leads one of the world's finest pianists in Berg's Kammerkonzert and conducts Mozart's exquisite chamber work for wind, the Gran Partita.

"Glowing with a mastery and conviction known to very few pianists, her performances brim over with zest, sheer style and assurance" Gramophone

"Boulez brings clarity to every sound strand, colour and dynamic…you hear nuances that many performances sweep under the carpet" The Times

Two great intellectual and musical minds meet for a new collaboration as the First Viennese School meets the Second. The concept is the pairing of two pieces which are in fact related more closely than one might at first think. Twelve-tone twentieth-century composition meets and draws inspiration from eighteenth-century classical form; Berg, like Mozart in the Gran Partita, used 13 wind instruments for his chamber work, and also looked to the musical structures used by Mozart and his contemporaries.

Uchida and Boulez's previous collaboration, of piano works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, won both a Gramophone Award, and an Edison award in the Netherlands.

This set shows the so-called bogey-men of the Second Viennese School, from their hyper Romantic height, through Expressionism and onto the more entertaining aspects of Serialism, as entertainers of a great order. The Nineteenth-Century heritage of Schubert, Brahms and Wagner are never far from Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in these 8 CDs, which concentrate on the earlier, more approachable (and often finest) products of three distinct composers, rather than any school. The performers reflect the composers' Romantic leanings here; Sinopoli bringing in artists at the height of their early careers: Deborah Voigt, Alessandra Marc and Juliane Banse.

The ever-approachable Berg is seen at his kindest and Webern, a figure who looked as far back as he did forward is as finely tuned in Im Sommerwind as in the Op.21 Symphony – a simply and fascinating journey. Schoenberg is in full splendour, too. Sounding more like Mahler's heir than a prophet of total change.

“In his highly compelling live recording, Sinopoli conducts a most sensuous reading of Gurrelieder, bringing out all it’s romantic voluptuousness… anyone who has ever thought of Schoenberg as cold should certainly hear this, magnetic from first to last…" Penguin Guide ***

“It would be hard to imagine more romantic readings of Berg’s principal orchestral works than those under Giuseppe Sinopoli. The atonal arguments of Berg have never been presented more sinuously, cocooning the ear, helped by sumptuous playing and recording” Penguin Guide ***