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Steffen Schleiermacher - Viennese School: Teachers and Followers: Alban Berg (2007)

Steffen Schleiermacher - Viennese School: Teachers and Followers: Alban Berg (2007)
  • Title: Viennese School: Teachers and Followers: Alban Berg
  • Year Of Release: 2007
  • Label: MDG
  • Genre: Classical
  • Quality: FLAC (tracks) / MP3 320 Kbps
  • Total Time: 01:11:34
  • Total Size: 220 / 175 Mb
  • WebSite:
Tracklist:

1. Sonata, op. 1e 12:23
2. Variations from Lulu 03:00
3. Kubiniana, op. 13: Lento assai 02:27
4. Kubiniana, op. 13: Marcia moderato 01:01
5. Kubiniana, op. 13: Allegretto 00:33
6. Kubiniana, op. 13: Grave 01:30
7. Kubiniana, op. 13: Andante molto 01:20
8. Kubiniana, op. 13: Tempo di Marcia 01:02
9. Kubiniana, op. 13: Allegro molto 01:11
10. Kubiniana, op. 13: Lento 02:35
11. Kubiniana, op. 13: Moderato 01:46
12. Kubiniana, op. 13: Andante molto 01:58
13. Die Maschine - Eine extonale Selbstsatire, op. 1 11:24
14. Andante rubato 04:56
15. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Zehn extonale Klavierstücke Lento 01:38
16. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Allegro non troppo 00:52
17. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Adagio 01:12
18. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4:Allegro con ira 00:29
19. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Adagio con espressione 02:34
20. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Tempo comodo 02:22
21. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Larghetto 02:25
22. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Con affetto, ma rubato 00:39
23. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Largo 02:50
24. Zehn extonale Klavierstücke, op. 4: Largo - animato 01:45
25. Three Short Piano Pieces: Langsame Halbe - Immer ganz zart 01:31
26. Three Short Piano Pieces: Heftige Achtel 00:59
27. Three Short Piano Pieces: Presto 00:25
28. Piano Piece 04:47

Performers:
Steffen Schleiermacher (piano)

The Viennese School -- Teachers and Followers: Alban Berg is an entry in pianist Steffen Schleiermacher's interesting series of recordings surveying the various acolytes -- both well known and obscure -- surrounding composer Arnold Schoenberg and his most famous adherents. Alban Berg is, through his works Wozzeck and Lulu, so readily associated with opera that we don't really think of him as a teacher; Berg's noted subservience to Schoenberg is so often emphasized in his biography that we tend to think of him as a perpetual student. Nevertheless, Berg was a very popular teacher and had many students in his short life, and this disc looks into works of three of them, in addition to including Berg's only work for piano solo, the famous Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-1909). This work is a ball of post-romantic passion that often threatens to break out of the key, and Schleiermacher's interpretation emphasizes forcefulness, accenting the harder edges of the piece and capturing little of its sense of rubato. One might have liked a bit more restraint in the interpretation of the Berg sonata, but it is not as if alternatives aren't readily available elsewhere; the other pieces on this program are a different matter.
The most interesting of the Berg students heard here is unquestionably Fritz Heinrich Klein, who's Die Maschine, Op. 1, (1921) almost resembles the early futurist piano music of George Antheil, except that when it was written Antheil hadn't arrived yet on European shores. Klein's gift for musical clairvoyance must have been pretty profound, as he developed Die Maschine from a twelve-tone set of his own devising, joining the long list of serialists -- Josef Matthias Hauer and Nikolai Roslavets, for example -- who were developing techniques of serial compositions either at the same time or before Schoenberg. Klein represented a particularly sore spot for Schoenberg as Die Maschine made it into print even before Schoenberg's Suite, Op. 25, or his first published method on dodecaphony. Schoenberg needn't have worried, as Klein's "extonal" music is not as endemic of a systematic method as a means for him to express a kind of personal, cranky eccentricity. The later Andante rubato (1929) shows a more moderate side of Klein, one that is strikingly like Berg's sonata.
The piano music of theorist and writer Theodor W. Adorno heard here is not half bad; it's at least better than his seamy and confused string quartet of 1921 that has been recorded elsewhere. Hans Erich Apostel's Kubiniana, Op. 13 (1946), was developed out of sketches notated directly into a book of drawings by artist Alfred Kubin; as John Cage in the Music of Changes was informed by the imperfections on his music paper, Apostel received stimulation through working on the surface of Kubin's art. Apostel, typically, it seems, is fragmentary, distant, and distracted -- the technique seems to be standing in for modes of expression that could be more personal, but that he chooses not to bring into play.
However, what Schleiermacher has wrought here is highly informative: Schoenberg's students went into different stylistical directions, not all of which he approved, and not all of Webern's students even went so far as to adopt atonality! However, in Berg's case, it seems the students wanted to adopt the manner of the master as closely as possible. On the other hand, this MDG disc really doesn't sound that good and is considerably lacking in low end; Schleiermacher's recording of the Berg sonata doesn't sound significantly better than the one by Beveridge Webster, issued on a Dover LP back in the 1960s.




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