A great performance/recording of one of the great 20th-century violin concertos

Although it must be the most lyrical major serialist composition and has many lush (and tonal) harmonies, The 1935 violin concerto of Alban Berg (1885-1935) can still frighten audiences -- and for better reasons, violinists. Knowing that there are layers of numerical mystical (mystifying!) codes that have been partly deciphered in it and other Berg music is also discouraging. I have to admit that the first few times I heard it (long, long ago) I somehow did not hear the 1723 Bach chorale (BWV 60, the "est ist genung" (it is enough!) part of the cantata "O Ewigket du Donnerwort" (O Eternity, Thou Word of Thunder) that Berg quoted, though now it sounds almost like an organ playing it and unmistakable. (The last four notes of Berg's twelve-ton row were the first four of Bach's melody.)

The piece registers sorrow and loss and eventual acceptance -- some hear the soft transcendence at the end as redemption. It recapitulates quotation -- in the first movement -- of a Carinthian (southwestern Austria) folk song Berg knew in his youth (an which recalled a love affair with Mizzi Scheuchl leading to pregnancy and illegitimate birth, though early on the music was interpreted as evoking the fragile innocence of Manon Gropius.

Berg took up a commission from American violinist Louis Krasner following the death on 22 April 1935 from complications of polio of Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and her second husband, Bahaus architect Walter Gropius. Berg had been particularly attached to the girl and -- like Mozart -- did not know that he was writing his own requiem. (He would die of blood poisoning in December of that year of blood poisoning, without finishing his opera "Lulu," work on which he interrupted to write the violin concerto).

The sort of concerto that Wolfgang Rihm wrote for Mutter during 1991-92, Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) often strikes me as doodling, including a lot of stray plucking -- and I don't think that a violin is particularly suited for chanting. According to the composer, "the violin speaks its nerve-line out into the resounding space -- inscribes it there.... And it is always song, even where beat and pulse shorten the breath and press it hard." He added, "as we listen we draft the outline of a whole that isn't there, but it must be there." Well, I don't. The failure to intuit the "whole that isn't there" may be mine, but I'm blaming it on Rihm!

What he wrote is very taxing on the violinist who must play way high in the violin's register very slowly with interference or interruptions from the orchestra (sputtering brass and loud drums). Mutter, circa 1992, when she was the greatest violinist in the world and was championing new music not only by Rihm, but by Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, and Krzysztof Penderecki, could do what the music required. I have no criticism of her playing nor that of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine-- who could be counted on to find and stress whatever lyricism there is in the music -- which is a lot in the Berg, some in Rihm. Levine was not one to soft-pedal the dramatic anguish when it appears, particularly at the start of the second movement in the Berg violin concerto.

Except for some cadenzas in the last part of the first movement of the Berg and in the first part of the second movement, Mutter did not have much occasion to show her phenomenal virtuosity for maintaining beautiful sound at high speed. The Rihm positively drags!

Neither piece is tonal, but except for the catastrophe music at the start of the second music, the Berg violin concerto is not dissonant. Both fade away on yearning notes.

Mutter played the Berg (and though I lack any other playing with which to compare it, I assume the Rihm) beautifully. (BTW, it has the seal of approval of Krasner.) The splendidly engineered recording won a Grammy. If it were only a matter of a recording of the Berg, Mutter's would be my choice. The 1984 recording by violinist Gidon Kremer with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, has the soloist a bit too out in front (overmiked). Kremer played it very well (with pretty much identical timings). On the Philips disc, the Berg violin concerto is paired with the Berg "Three Orchestral Pieces" from 1914, better company in my view. I have not heard the recording of Henryk Szeryng (who was a great violinist) of the Berg on a disc with Alfred Brendel playing the Schoenberg piano concerto and Zvi Zeitlin playing the Schoenberg violin concerto, all conducted by the estimable Rafael Kubelik. With all three of the major concerti of "the second Vienna School" that disc has to provide the most bang for the buck! (Fugget about the Perlman/Ozawa one, which is inferior to the Mutter/Levine and the Kremer/Davis ones; it pairs the Berg with the Stravinsky violin concerto -- which Mutter also recorded at her peak.)

The disc is also one of three in "Mutter Modern (with her recording of the 1991 Bartok paired with Norbert Moret's "En reve" on one disc and the 1988 Stravinsky/Lutoslawaski disc.


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray


* See my review of Mutter playing Penderecki's second violin concerto, written for her (paired with the Bartok second violin concerto).


Tracks and Timings

Berg Concerto for Violin
1. Andante - Allegretto 11:33
2. Allegro - Adagio 16:24

Rihm: Time Chant
Beginning 14:27
Bar 179 9:56

Total: 52 minutes