Litwin, Carey, Kakuska, Erben, Arditti String Quartet - Schoenberg 3: Chamber Music (1995)

In 1904, Anton Webern enrolled as a pupil in the classes given by Schoenberg at the Schwarzwald private School. He was soon joined by Alban Berg. Both young composers had already produced a number of essays in a style as yet unsure, but which was gradually to assert itself under the august supervision of Schoenberg. It is this period of apprenticeship and maturation which we are here given a chance to discover in the company of the Arditti Quartet, the pianist Stefan Litwin, and Thomas Kakuska, violist of the Alban Berg Quartet. In the case of Webern, the most remarkable feature is the speed with which he assimilated and transcended his master’s teaching, as is demonstrated by the works from around 1910 recorded here: from the Piano Quintet of 1907, notable for the high quality of its development, to the Three Pieces for cello and piano op.11 (1914) which, in their extraordinary concision and their virtual exploration of sound from the inside, already show the fingerprints of the fully mature composer. Berg’s development was to be a longer process, even though Schoenberg very early identified his ‘extraordinary talent as a composer’. All written before the Piano Sonata op.1, the nine short pieces of 1905-08 gathered here represent the ‘workshop’ of the prentice composer. In their revealing demonstration of a perceptible evolution in his language, they shed precious new light on one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century.