String Quartet op. 3-Alban Berg?s String Quartet can be considered to be one of the founding works of the Second Viennese School. Already composed in 1910 and first published in 1920 it was the last composition the25-year-old wrote under the tutelage of Arnold Schoenberg who admired ?the fullness and unconstraint of his musical language the strength and sureness of its presentation its careful working and significantoriginality?. Even today the extremely complex work places the highest technical demands on the interpreters; for this reason this edition contains parts that are especially good to play from in which each musician can alsofollow what is going on in the other parts.

The cycle Seven Early Songs on texts by Lenau Rilke Storm and other poets was put together in 1928 more than 20 years after the composition of the individual songs. From the large amount of songs for voice and piano that he had written in his early years Alban Berg selected seven of them which he then orchestrated. After serious consideration he laid down a definitive sequence in which the tempo constantly alternates while the orchestral instruments symmetrically recede before picking up again. Once the piano and orchestral editions were printed the Seven Early Songs quickly conquered concert halls in both scorings. They are still at home on the concert stages ofthe world today which is reason enough to present this work by Alban Berg in an Urtext edition following the Violin Concerto. The orchestral material can now be purchased for the first time.

aus Sieben frühe Lieder. Par BERG ALBAN. From Sieben Frühe Lieder, the choral transcription of Im Zimmer provides a fascinating glimpse at the compositional bent of a young Alban Berg, decried by his mentor Arnold Schönberg as “too vocal.” While Schönberg may have succeeded in re-training his pupil, the Seven Early Songs still live one hundred years later to please our modern ears./ Répertoire / Double Chœur Mixte SATB

Performer: Agnes Baltsa, Antonia Fahberg, Audience Applause, Barbara Hendricks, Berliner Philharmoniker, et al. Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Berlin Conductor: Alfred Hertz, Arthur Nikisch, Bruno Walter, Carlo Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado, et al. Compositeur: Alban Berg, Anton Bruckner, Anton Webern, Antonin Dvorak, Antonio Vivaldi, et al. CD (16 septembre 2013) Nombre de disques: 50 Format : Coffret, CD Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Par BERG ALBAN. Composed by a young Berg, while studying with Schoenberg, these Seven Early Songs would be revisited and reworked ten years later, and then again ten years after that. Perhaps influenced by Mahler, Berg created orchestral settings of these songs, in addition to the voice and piano versions./ Répertoire / Voix Haute et Orchestre

Par BERG ALBAN. Analysen - Textkorrekturen - Interpretationen/ Répertoire / Divers

The Violin Concerto was commissioned by Stiftung Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. It was first performed by Gidon Kremer (violin) and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchester conducted by DennisRussell Davies at the Musikhalle Hamburg Germany on 29 August 2003. Interpolated within this one-minute-one-movement layout is a recurrent refrain where the soloist articulates one of the basic harmonic foundations of anumber of the one minute sections (six dominant 7ths - on E F sharp C A B D) in an undisguised Bachian fashion. The slow arpeggios in the later variants of the refrain not unexpectedly find themselves sharing a bed with theopening of Berg's Violin Concerto. Nyman has effectively adopted Berg's orchestral template with two exceptions - the omission of the alto Saxophone and replaced Berg's Percussion section with Marimba and Vibraphone mallet instruments which intertwine with the soloist in the Concerto. Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was dedicated to 'the memory of an angel' Manon Gropius. Nyman's Concerto was dedicated to the memory of DanielToscan du Plantier a friend and neighbour - in Nyman's words 'certainly no angel but a major figure in the recording and film industries'. Arranged for solo Violin and Piano accompaniment the duration of thiswork is approximately: 25 minutes.

String Quartet No.2 was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 1981. Programme note: Hans Abrahamsens's second string quartet was commissioned by the Lerchenborg music-week of 1981 during which it was first performed by the Gaudeamus Quartet. In Hans Abrahamsen's second quartet it is the continuous alternation of soberness and drama that first catches the listner's ears: the lyrical/gestural tradition as we know it from Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg pitched - not against - but around the 'sober barbarism' which is characteristic of rhytmic neo-classicism. Both the first and the last movement of th is quartet are emotional at manylevels: sad - and still seething with life and always unpredictable in their development it is night twilight and white-hot light. Sparkling diamonds set off by scarlett velvet. The two middle movements link the contrasts without cushioning: the second movement a gruelling stripped rhythmical drill followed by a hushed far-off dance in triple meter which shifts and hesitates all the time though. There is an ambience of the classics glimpsed through many veils. The second quartet is music which is fraught with danger in its ambiguous relation to tradition: the past emerges as a most relevant and living ghost. The Beauty and the Beast as musical drama.

Nach Alban Berg ist Anton Webern der zweite Komponist der Wiener Schule, der in den Henle-Katalog aufgenommen wird. Weberns Musik ist bekannt für ihre extreme Knappheit und strenge Organisation. Die Aufführung der Variationen op. 27 dauert noch nicht einmal zehn Minuten - eine kurze Zeitspanne, in der die Zuhörer wahre Extreme durchleben. Webern hat das Stück mit mehreren Pianisten einstudiert, und aus dieser Zusammenarbeit sind überraschend emotionale Interpretationshilfen überliefert. Nach Einsichtnahme aller verfügbarer Quellen legt der Herausgeber Ullrich Scheideler nun einen neu überprüften Notentext vor und dokumentiert überdies die verwickelte Entstehungsgeschichte und Weberns aufschlussreiche Hinweise zum Vortrag. Ein Klassiker der Moderne, nun auch in Henle-Blau. / Piano / Chanson En Séparée

Il existe une règle non écrite de dire que l'artiste doit maintenir son art et questions personnelles strictement séparés. ' Le compositeur York Höller, uniquement pour objet instantanément, dit: ' Si cette règle avait respecté Alban Berg, Lyrische Suite for string quartet aurait jamais été écrit ' - comme, on peut ajouter, serait de nombreuses autres oeuvres du répertoire classique ! Avec le Quintette pour piano Zwiegestalt, réalisé pour la première fois à Essen en juin 2008 par Anthony Spiri et le Quatuor Minguet, Höller a créé son propre ' suite lyrique '. Ses cinq mouvements sont fondées sur une 'structure tonale' en forme de lettres note musicale du compositeur obtenus à partir des noms de son épouse décédée et son partenaire actuel. / Quintette Avec Piano