This Week in Classical Music: February 19, 2024.  Alban Berg, Part III, Lulu.  Frank Wedekind was a famous (and controversial) German playwright.  Among his more famous plays 

were two, Earth Spirit, written in 1895, and Pandora's Box, from 1904, usually paired together and called Lulu plays, after the name of the protagonist.  For a while, the plays were banned for presumed obscenity.  Berg saw the plays in the early 1900s in Berlin, with Wedekind himself playing Jack the Ripper in Pandora's Box.  He was much taken by the plays, and some quarter century later, following the success of his first opera, Wozzeck, decided to write another one, based on Wedekind’s plays.  The storyline of the plays is convoluted: Lulu, an impoverished girl, is saved by a rich publisher, Dr. Schön, from life on the streets.  Schön brings her up and makes her his lover.  Later, he marries Lulu off to one Dr. Goll.  The painter Schwarz gets involved; Lulu seduces him, and poor Dr. Goll dies of a heart attack upon learning of Lulu’s betrayal.  Lulu marries painter Schwarz while remaining Dr. Schön’s mistress.  Dr. Schön tells Schwarz about Lulu’s past; overwhelmed, Schwarz kills himself.  Eventually, Lulu marries Dr. Schön but is unfaithful to him, sleeping with Schön’s son Alwa and other men and women.  Once Schön discovers her affairs, he gives Lulu a gun to kill herself - but instead, she shoots him.  Lulu is imprisoned at the end of Earth Spirit.  In Pandora's Box, Lulu escapes from prison with help from her lesbian lover and marries Alwa, Dr. Schön’s son, (whose father Lulu killed in cold blood).  She’s then blackmailed by her former companions and subsequently loses all her money when a certain company’s shares, Lulu’s main asset, become worthless.  Lulu and Alwa move to London; destitute, she works as a streetwalker.   One of her clients kills Alwa, and eventually, Lulu herself is killed by Jack the Ripper. 

By 1929, when Berg started working on Lulu, he was financially secure and quite famous, thanks to the popularity of Wozzeck.  He used Wedekind’s Earth Spirit to write the libretto for Act I and part of Act II, and Pandora's Box for the rest of what he planned as a three-act opera.  He worked on it for the next five years and mostly completed it in what’s called a “short score,” without complete orchestration, in 1934.  By then the Naxis were in power and the cultural situation had changed dramatically.  Berg’s position was difficult on two accounts: first, because of the kind of music he was composing (by now not just atonal but 12-tonal) – the Nazis considered it “Entartete,” that is “Degenerate.”  And secondly, he was a pupil of a famous Jewish composer, Schoenberg, and that, in the eyes of the regime, tainted him even more.  Wozzeck was banned (Erich Kleiber conducted the last performance of the opera in November of 1932), practically none of his music was being performed, and Berg’s financial situation was precarious.  In January of 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg a violin concerto; financially, that was of great help and the concerto, dedicated to the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, who died of polio, became one of Berg’s most successful compositions.

Understanding that Lulu most likely wouldn’t be staged in Germany – or anywhere else – anytime soon, Berg decided to write a suite for soprano and orchestra based on the opera, the so-called Lulu Suite.  Erich Kleiber performed it in November of 1934, it was well received by the public but the level of condemnation by Goebbels and his underlings was such that Kleiber was not only forced to resign from the Berlin Opera but emigrated from Germany.  Berg continued working on the orchestration of Lulu but never completed it: in November of 1935 he was bitten by an insect, that developed into a furuncle, which led to blood poisoning.  Berg died on Christmas Eve of 1935.  In 1979, the Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration of the third act; this became the standard version of Lulu.

Here is Berg’s Lulu Suite.  It’s performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle conducting.  Arleen Auger is the soprano.

This Week in Classical Music: February 12, 2024.  Alban Berg, Part II.  In 1911, Arnold Schoenberg moved from Vienna to Berlin but the intense relationship between Berg and his teacher continued through letters.  Schoenberg’s notes often contained demands that were about more than just the music: some were domestic, some financial.  Though Berg adored his teacher, Schoenberg’s demands were difficult and time-consuming, and the relationship was getting more difficult – so much so that in 1915 their correspondence broke off.  WWI was in full swing; Berg was conscripted into the Austrian Army and served for three years (the 42-year-old Schoenberg, who moved back to Vienna in 1915, also served in the army, but only for a year).  Things changed in 1918 after Berg was discharged: he returned to Vienna and reestablished his relationship with his teacher.

In May of 1914 Berg attended a performance of Woyzeck, a play by the German playwright Georg Büchner.   He immediately decided to write an opera based on the play; it would become known as Wozzeck, a misspelling of the original play’s name that somehow stuck.  Berg wrote the libretto himself, selecting 15 episodes from Woyzeck, a macabre story of a poor and desperate soldier, who, suspecting that the mother of his illegitimate child is having an affair with the Captain, murders her, and then drowns.  Berg started writing sketches soon after he saw the play but had to stop in June of 1915 when he was drafted.  He continued composing while on leave in 1917 and 1918, finished the first act in 1919, the second act two years later, and completed the opera in 1922.  It premiered at the Berlin State Opera in December of 1925, with Erich Kleiber conducting.  Wozzeck created a scandal, which is understandable, given that it was the first full-size opera written in an atonal idiom, unique not only musically but also in its emotional impact.  What is more important (and somewhat surprising) is that the premier was followed by a slew of productions across Germany and Austria.  Wozzeck was staged continuously in different German-speaking cities for the next eight years, but also internationally: in Prague, Philadelphia, and even in such an unlikely place as Leningrad.  It all came to an end when the Nazis banned it as part of their campaign against Entartete Musik (Degenerate music) and the Austrians dutifully followed.  Wozzeck’s success made Berg financially secure, brought him international recognition and some teaching jobs.  We’ll listen for the first 15 minutes of Act II of Wozzeck.  In Scene 1, Marie puts her son to bed, then Vozzeck arrives, gets suspicious of her earrings (they were given to her by the Captain), gives her some money and leaves.  In Scene 2, the Doctor and the Captain walk the street; they see Wozzeck, make fun of him and insinuate that Marie isn’t faithful.  Wozzeck runs away in despair.  Claudio Abbado conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Vienna State Opera (we know the orchestra as the Vienna Philharmonic); Wozzeck is sung by Franz Grundheber, his common-law wife Marie is Hildegard Behrens.  Heinz Zednik is the Captain, Aage Haugland is the Doctor.

Wozzeck was an atonal opera, but it wasn’t a 12-note composition, the technique which by then was being developed by Schoenberg.  Berg was receptive to it and soon moved in a similar direction.  He wrote two pieces, Kammerkonzert (Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with 13 Wind Instruments), completed in 1925, and Lyric Suite, a year later, which broadly used the 12-tone technique.  In 1929 he started work on his second major opera, Lulu, a much larger and more complex composition than Wozzeck.  We’ll cover it next week, in our the third and final installment on Berg.

This Week in Classical Music: February 5, 2024.  Berg, Part I, Early Years.  Alban Berg, a seminal German composer of the first half of the 20^th century, was born in Vienna on February 9^th of 1885.  Berg, with Anton Webern, was a favorite pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and was one of the first composers to write atonal and 12-tonal music.  While Schoenberg was often cerebral, even in his more expressive works and Webern a much stricter follower of the technique in his succinct, perfectly formed pieces, Berg’s music was more lyrical and Romantic, even as he abandoned the tonal format.  Berg’s background was very different from his Jewish teacher’s: his Viennese family was well-off, at least while his father was alive (he died when Alban was 15), they lived in the center of the city (Schoenbergs lived in Leopoldstadt, a poor Jewish neighborhood).  Berg was a poor student: he had to repeat the 6^th and the 7^th grades.  Even though Alban was interested in music from an early age and wrote many songs, he clearly wasn’t suited for studies in a formal environment and lacked the required qualifications, so, instead of going to a conservatory he became an unpaid civil servant trainee.  In 1904, without any previous musical education, he became Schoenberg’s student.  By that time Schoenberg, who was struggling financially and took students to support himself, had already written Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) and a symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande.  Both had a fluid tonal canvass as Schoenberg was already researching the atonal idiom, but it would be another three years till he’d write his Quartet no. 2, his first truly atonal piece; all these developments took place while Berg was his student.  Berg studied with Schoenberg till 1911, first the counterpoint and music theory, and later composition.  During that time he sketched several piano sonatas and later completed one of them, published as his op. 1.  That was a big departure, as before joining Schoenberg all he could write were songs.   

We should note that the pre-WWI years in Vienna were a period of tremendous cultural development; despite the overall antisemitism of the Austrian society, many of the leading figures were Jewish, and sexuality was explored deeply for the first time.  In music, it was Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, Egon Wellesz, Ernst Toch, and of course, Webern and Berg, with many younger composers to follow.  Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil and Stefan Zweig were important novelists and playwrights (Frank Wedekind, their German contemporary, was the source for Berg’s opera Lulu).  The painter Gustav Klimt was Berg’s friend, and so was the architect Adolf Loos.  And we shouldn’t forget Sigmund Freud, who was not just a psychoanalyst famous around Vienna but a leading cultural figure.   

A characteristic episode happened in March of 1913 when Schoenberg conducted what became known as the Skandalkonzert ("scandal concert") in Vienna’s Musikverein.  Here’s the program: Webern: Six Pieces for Orchestra; Zemlinsky: Four Orchestral Songs on poems by Maeterlinck; Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1; Berg: Two of the Five Orchestral Songs on Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg.  Mahler's Kindertotenlieder was supposed to be performed at the end, but during the performance of Berg’s songs fighting began and the concert was cut short.   The Viennese public’s response could be expected, if not necessarily in its physical form (after all, their favorite music was Strauss’s waltzes), but how many American presenters would dare to program such a concert in our time, more than 100 years later?  We can listen to Berg’s songs that were performed during the concert, no. 2 of op. 4 here and no. 3 here.  The soprano is Renée Flemming; Claudio Abbado leads the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. 

We’ll continue with Berg and his two masterpieces, operas Wozzeck and Lulu, next week. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 29, 2024.  Schubert, Mendelssohn and more.  What an exceptional week: Franz Schubert was born on January 31^st of 1797, and February 3^rd is the anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn, born 12 years later, in 1809.  We just celebrated Mozart’s birthday; he died very young, at 35.  Schubert’s life was even shorter: he was 31 when he passed away, and Mendelssohn – only 38.  All three could’ve lived twice as long, and our culture would’ve been so much richer.  Schubert is one of our perennial favorites (tastes and predilections change, Schubert stays) and we’ve written many entries about him (here and here, for example), including longer articles on his song cycles.  There are hundreds of his pieces in our library – he remains one of the most often performed composers.  His life was not eventful, his music was sublime, so here’s one of his songs: An die Musik, that is, To Music that Schubert composed in March of 1817 (he was twenty).  Nothing can be simpler and more beautiful.  We could not select a favorite recording, there are too many excellent ones, so we present three, all sung by the Germans: soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with the great pianist, Edwin Sicher, released in 1958 (here); the 1967 recording made by the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Roger Moore (here); and Fritz Wunderlich, an amazing tenor who also died at 35, accompanied by Hubert Giesen in a 1967 recording (here).  You can decide for yourself which one you like better. 

As for Mendelssohn, his most famous “songs” were not vocal butfor piano solo:Songs without Words.  Still, he also composed “real” songs – not as many as Schubert, of course, who wrote about 600 – and some of them are wonderful.  Here, for example, is Gruss (Greeting), a song from his op. 19a on a poem by Henrich Heine.  It’s performed by the Irish tenor Robin Tritschler, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau.  When he wrote his songs op. 19a, Mendelssohn wasn’t much older than Schubert of An die Musik: he started the cycle at the age of 21.  

Three Italian composers were also born this week: Alessandro Marcello, on February 1^st of 1673, Luigi Dallapiccola, on February 3^rd of 1904, and Luigi Nono, on January 29^th of 1924.  We’ve never written about Dallapiccola even though he was a very interesting composer; we’ll do it next week. 

Also, yesterday was Arthur Rubinstein’s birthday (he was born in 1887, 137 years ago, but his ever-popular recordings evidence that he was one of the greatest pianists of the 20^th century).  Two wonderful singers were also born this week, the Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi on February 1^st of 1922, and the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, one of the few non-Italians who could sing Italian operas as well as the best of the locals, on February 5^th of 1911. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 22, 2024.  Mozart.  The main event of this week is Mozart’s birthday, on January 27^th.  Wolfgang Amadeus was born in 1756 in Salzburg.  One of the greatest composers in history, he excelled in practically every genre of classical music.  His operas are of the highest order (just think of the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, the Marriage of Figaro, or Così fan tutte, but then there are several operas, though not as popular, such as La clemenza di Tito, The Abduction from the Seraglio, or Idomeneo, that would make any other composer proud).  His symphonies are the pinnacle of the orchestral music of the Classical period, and so are his piano concertos.  His violin concertos were written when he was very young (the last one, no. 5, “Turkish” was completed when Mozart was 19) but were already very good.  He wrote many piano sonatas that predate Beethoven’s, and wonderful violin sonatas (he was a virtuoso performer of both instruments).  And then there is his chamber music: trios, quartets for all combinations of instruments, not just the strings, quintets, and much more.  He did all that in just 35 years.  In addition to the “standard” piano and violin concertos, Mozart wrote concertos for many different wind instruments: the horn (four of them), bassoon, flute, oboe, and clarinet.  His Clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622 is marvelous.  It’s a late piece, late, of course, in Mozart’s terms – he was 35 in 1791 when it was completed, less than two months before his death of still unknown causes (one thing we know for sure is that he has not been poisoned by Antonio Salieri): Mozart was already quite ill while working on the concerto.  The concerto was written for Anton Stadler, a virtuoso clarinetist and a close friend of Mozart’s (they had known each other since 1781) for whom he also wrote his Clarinet Quintet.  Stadler invented the so-called basset clarinet, a version of the instrument that allows the performer to reach lower notes, and that was the instrument for which Mozart wrote the concerto.  We’ll hear it performed by a talented German clarinetist Sabine Meyer with the Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Hans Vonk.

Muzio Clementi, who competed as a keyboard player and composer with Mozart at the court of Emperor Josef II, was born on January 23^rd of 1752.  He, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, the pianists Josef Hofmann, John Ogdon and Arthur Rubinstein, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré and Wilhelm Furtwängler, a great conductor, all of whom were born this week, will have to wait for another time.

This Week in Classical Music: January 15, 2024.  Schein and much more.  Several composers were born this week: Niccolò Piccinni (b. 1/16/1728), a nearly forgotten Italian composer who was famous in his day for his Neapolitan opera buffa; Cesar Cui (b. 1/18/1835), a Russian composer of French descent (his father entered Russia with Napoleon) and a member of the Mighty Five; Emmanuel Chabrier (b. 1/18/1841), a mostly self-taught French composer, whose España is his best-known symphonic work but who also wrote some very nice songs; Ernest Chausson (b. 1/20/1855), another Frenchman, who wrote the Poème for the violin and orchestra which entered the repertoire of all virtuoso violinists; Walter Piston (b. 1/20/1894), a prolific and prominent American composer of the 20^th century who often used Schoenberg’s 12-note method; Alexander Tcherepnin (b. 1/20/1899), a Russian composer who was born into a prominent musical family (his father, Nikolai Tcherepnin was a noted composer and cultural figure), left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, settled in France, moved to the US after WII and had several symphonies premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and, finally, another Frenchman, Henri Duparc (b. 1/21/1848), best known for his art songs.  None of these composers were what is usually called “great” but all were talented and some of their works are very interesting.  Listen, for example, to Alexander Tcherepnin’s 10 Bagatelles, op. 5 in a version for piano and orchestra (here).  Margrit Weber is at the piano, Ferenc Fricsay conducts the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.  Or, in a very different way, here’s Duparc’s fine song, L'invitation au Voyage.  Jessye Norman is accompanied by Dalton Baldwin.

One composer, also born this week, interests us more than all the above, even though his name is almost forgotten- Johann Hermann Schein.  Schein, a good friend of the better-known Heinrich Schütz, was one of the most important German composers of the pre-Bach era.  He was born on January 20^th of 1586 (99 years before Bach) in Grünhain, a small town in Saxony.  As a boy, he moved to Dresden where he joined the Elector’s boys’ choir; there he also received thorough music instruction.  In his twenties, on the elector’s scholarship, he studied law and liberal arts at the University of Leipzig.  He published his first collection of madrigals and dances, titled Venus Kräntzlein, in 1609.  Starting in 1613 he occupied several kapellmeister positions, starting in smaller cities, till 1616, when he was called to Leipzig.  He passed the audition and was accepted as the Thomaskantor, the most senior position in the city and the one Bach would assume 107 years later.  Like Bach a century later, he was responsible for the music at two main churches, Thomaskirche and the Nicolaikirche, and for teaching students at the Thomasschule.  Schein held the position of Thomaskantor for the rest of his life, which, unfortunately, was short: in his later years, he suffered from tuberculosis and other maladies and died at the age of 44 (Heinrich Schütz visited him on his deathbed).

Here's Schein’s motet, Drei schöne Ding sind (Three beautiful things), performed by the Ensemble Vocal Européen under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe.  And here’s another motet, Ist nicht Ephraim mein teurer Sohn (Isn't Ephraim my dear son?), performed by the same musicians.