Berg: Adagio - 2nd movement of the Chamber Concert

Recordings: Symphony Hall, Boston, USA, May 1972 (The Soldier’s Tale: music), December 1974 (Octet, Pastorale, Ragtime, Septet, Concertino), April 1978 (Berg: Adagio, Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony); Polydor Studios, London, UK, July 1975 (The Soldier’s Tale: speech)

Stravinsky’s tongue-in-cheek morality masterpiece, The Soldier’s Tale, is one of his cleverest and most enduring works, here receiving its first outing on CD, following several requests. It boasts a stellar cast, not only of musicians, drawn from the Boston Symphony and soloists in their own right, but also of the narrators/actors – Sir John Gielgud, Tom Courtenay and Ron Moody, with English texts by Michael Flanders & Kitty Black.

The couplings include the BSCP’s complete LP of chamber music by Stravinsky (the Concertino and Septet being released on CD for the first time), and also works by Schoenberg and Berg, previously unissued internationally on CD.

This disc of Berg’s complete output for chamber music was originally issued by Chandos in 2001, as part of the Schoenberg Quartet’s traversal of all the chamber music written by the Second Viennese School. It included many rarities and arrangements – here, for instance, is the only currently available recording of Berg’s own transcription of the last of his early and passionate Altenberg-Lieder for a quartet of piano, harmonium, violin and cello, made for performance at an influential private musical society, established by Schoenberg in 1900 in order to play and promote the revolutionary music of himself, his friends and associates, away from the catcalls of the conservative Viennese public. This disc contains some of the most heartfelt and openly passionate music from a musical school often regarded as forbidding and abstract.