Alban Berg - Violin Concerto

- Composer: Alban Maria Johannes Berg (9 February 1885 -- 24 December 1935)
- Orchestra: New York Philharmonic
- Conductor: Lorin Maazel
- Soloist: Anne-Sophie Mutter
- Year of recording: 2007 (Live)

The Violin Concerto was written in 1935, and is probably Berg’s best-known and most frequently performed instrumental piece.

00:00 – I. a) Andante (Prelude) / b) Allegretto (Scherzo)
11:41 – II. a) Allegro (Cadenza) / b) Adagio (Chorale Variations)

The piece stemmed from a commission from the violinist Louis Krasner. When he first received the commission, Berg was working on his opera Lulu, and he did not begin work on the concerto for some months. The event that spurred him into writing was the death by polio of 18-year-old Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler (once Gustav Mahler’s wife) and Walter Gropius. Berg set Lulu to one side to write the concerto, which he dedicated “Dem Andenken eines Engels” (To the memory of an angel).

Berg worked on the piece very quickly, completing it within a few months; it is thought that his working on the concerto was largely responsible for his failing to complete Lulu before his death on 24 December 1935 (the violin concerto was the last work that Berg completed). The work was premiered after the composer’s death, with Krasner playing the solo part, on 19 April 1936, in Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona.

The concerto is structured in two movements, each further divided into two sections. The first movement begins with an Andante in classical sonata form, followed by the Allegretto, a dance-like section. The second movement starts with an Allegro largely based on a single recurring rhythmic cell; this section has been described as cadenza-like, with very difficult passages in the solo part. The orchestration becomes rather violent at its climax (which is literally marked in the score as “High point of the Allegro”); the fourth and final section, marked Adagio, is in a much calmer mood. The first two sections are meant to represent life, the last two death and transfiguration.

Like a number of other works by Berg, the piece combines the twelve tone technique, typical of serialistic music learned from his teacher Arnold Schoenberg with passages written in a freer, more tonal style. The score integrates serialism and tonality in a remarkable fashion.

Of the 12-tone row that Berg used in this piece, the last four notes (ascending whole tones) are also the first four notes of the chorale melody “Es ist genug” (It Is Enough). Berg quotes this chorale directly in the last movement of the piece, where the harmonisation by Johann Sebastian Bach is heard in the clarinets.

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