Berg: Violin Concerto 'To the Memory of an Angel' (1935)

I’ve long dreamed of playing with the Wiener Philharmoniker,” said violinist Renaud Capuçon in 2011, and his dream has come true with this recording of two concerto masterpieces of the Austro-German repertoire: the Brahms and the Berg, composed almost 50 years apart. The conductor is Daniel Harding, who has built a close relationship the legendary Viennese orchestra.

Renaud Capuçon, the leading French violinist of his generation, joins the British conductor Daniel Harding and the august Wiener Philharmoniker for two landmark concertos of the Austro-German repertoire. The expansive Brahms concerto, first performed in 1878 by Joseph Joachim, is a peak of the composer’s glowingly warm Romanticism, while the Berg concerto – written in 1935, the last year of Berg’s life, and dedicated to the memory of Manon Gropius, who had died aged just 19 – poignantly blends the atonality of the Second Viennese School with subtle lyricism and, in its second movement, a haunting Bach chorale.

The contrast between the two works echoes the programme of Capuçon’s 2009 Virgin Classics release of the Beethoven and Korngold concertos, described by BBC Music as “a beautiful and appropriate pairing” and “perfect choices for Capuçon’s elegantly understated delivery”. In 2011, after a US performance of the Korngold –composed 10 years after the Berg and a more extrovert offshoot of the Austro-German tradition – the Chicago Tribune praised Capuçon’s “panache, sensitivity and sizzling virtuosity” and “the rich, penetrating sound he drew from his instrument, a 1737 Guarneri del Gesù once belonging to Isaac Stern”.

“I’ve long dreamed of playing with the Wiener Philharmoniker, which is of course one of the world’s most extraordinary orchestras,” said Capuçon in an interview in October 2011. “I’m going to record with them in December, so that will be a dream come true!” This release is the fruit of those recording sessions. Harding made his debut with the legendary Viennese orchestra in 2004, when he was not yet 30, and has since built up a close relationship with its players. Describing the conductor’s approach to Brahms, The Guardian has written that: “Harding is immaculate in his ability to negotiate the complex relationship between feeling and form.”

Capuçon, meanwhile, has pronounced Brahms one of his favourite composers, “for his serenity and the sense of resurrection that he conveys”. His Virgin Classics recording of Brahms chamber works, with his cellist brother Gautier and the pianist Nicholas Angelich was described by Gramophone as “sure to kindle anyone's enthusiasm for Brahms. Warm, beautifully balanced tone stresses the composer's romantic side, as does the expansive phrasing. There's a feeling of spontaneity, too, as though each player is discovering new aspects to the music while recording it.”

“My first collaboration with Claudio Abbado – with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in 2008 – opened my eyes to a new way of understanding and experiencing the Beethoven Violin Concerto. He then expressed the wish to perform Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, this time with the Orchestra Mozart. It seemed to him to be an obvious and natural continuation of the project to record these two works in further rehearsals and in concert and to produce a CD of them.

To place these two masterpieces in such close proximity was something quite new for me. The rehearsals in Bologna in 2010 involved working on the two pieces directly after each other: the result was an intense journey through sorrow and suffering in Alban Berg, by way of the cathartic Bach chorale, to Beethoven at his most radiant, apparently leaving all earthly cares far behind him, which utterly enchanted every one of us.

To make music with Claudio Abbado is an infinite joy, a genuine key to the magic of music. I would like to express here my sincerest thanks for his confidence and my boundless admiration for his artistry.” Isabelle Faust

Christian Ferras (1933-1982) was, alongside Jacques Thibaud, Zino Francescatti and Ginette Neveu, one of the great violinists who had a determining influence on the Franco-Belgian violin school: an art of playing the violin which is often associated with sensuality, elegance and a refined sound quality. Following his début in Paris in 1946 with the “Symphonie espagnole” by Édouard Lalo and Beethoven’s violin concerto, Ferras launched an international career.

Together with the pianist Pierre Barbizet he formed a congenial duo which lasted for three decades. His cooperation with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic during the 1960s marked the pinnacle of his career. Ferras had made his début with the Berlin Philharmonic as early as 1951. Under the baton of Karl Böhm, he performed the Beethoven violin concerto at the Titania Palast. On this occasion a studio recording was made at the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin which is presented here. It is fascinating to experience the beauty and confident serenity of Ferras’ interpretation of the solo part when he was only eighteen years old.

A live recording from 1964 with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin under the baton of the Italian-American conductor Massimo Freccia is an impressive document of Ferras’ reading of the Alban Berg violin concerto: he saw it as a primarily romantic work which he performed with great expressiveness to striking effect. Ferras’ career took a tragic turn when, towards the end of the 1960s, he began battling with depression and alcoholism which resulted in a gradual withdrawal from concert life. In 1975, he accepted a professorship at the Paris Conservatoire and in the following years he no longer performed publicly. Ferras returned to the concert platform once more in March 1982; however, only three weeks after his final concert on 25 August 1982, at the age of 49, he took his own life.

Recorded 17th August 1960.

“Conducting is only a means to an end, never an end in itself. Making music is everything – and the less conducting draws attention to itself, the more beautiful the music will be and truly stir our hearts”.

Joseph Keilberth joined the Karlsruhe Staatstheater at the age of seventeen as a répétiteur. Ten years later he became general music director, the youngest at the time in Germany. On Furtwängler’s recommendation he was appointed chief conductor of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague for the war years, moving to the Dresden State Opera (then in the Russian zone) in 1945. He remained in that position until 1950, by which time he had achieved a bizarre reunion with his Prague orchestra, now renamed the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and newly resident in that town in western Germany.

Keilberth was a great Wagnerian conductor and recorded the first-ever stereo Ring – now available as a celebrated Testament release in a 14-CD set – SBT141412.

If both the Bruckner and the Schubert overture which opened this 1960 concert were Keilberth regulars, the Berg Violin Concerto was a newcomer to his repertoire that became a personal favourite; it was also his first-ever Berg score. He prepared it for the first time in December 1955 for a Hamburg State Opera concert with André Gertler. “It’s really coming together now”, he noted, “but much still sounds as if it’s wrong”. A little later he wrote to his son Thomas: “I’m pleased that the Berg Concerto now means more to you. For me, it’s the only 12-tone work that I like”. Then, by the 1965/66 season, Keilberth was replying to a questionnaire about his “Ten 20thcentury Masterworks of Music”. The Berg Concerto had become his No.2 choice, just ahead of Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks but losing out to Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony.

Arthur Grumiaux was a prince among violinists and recorded extensively for Philips/Decca. Many of his recordings – some of them released internationally for the first time on CD – have appeared on an extensive series on the Eloquence label. Here is another – a rare 1956 performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto coupled with his highly-praised traversals of the Stravinsky and Berg concertos.

[Berg/Stravinsky]: "Grumiaux's pure style brings rare magic to both these works. To the Berg he brings above all tenderness and sweetness; to the Stravinsky he brings above all strength and dynamism. The one virtuoso, remaining his individual self all the time, effortlessly encompasses the utterly different demands of each work." Gramophone

Two milestones of the violin repertoire that could not be more different, with painful farewells and the excitement of departing for new shores.The tension and contradictions inherent here are given full expression by Arabella Steinbacher and Andris Nelsons in interpretations of immense subtlety.

After numerous national and international prizes, Winfried Rademacher has appeared as leader and as soloist with orchestras of international distinction both in the concert-hall and in the recording studio. He plays a Nicolo Gagliano violin from 1733.