Webern reviews
Berg • Schreker • Webern: Orchestral Works
Brahms the Progressive: Works by Brahms, Berg and Webern
Richard Strauss and the Viennese Trumpet
Belle Epoque
Reformation: Works by Mendelssohn, Stravinsky et al
The Mathilde Album
Accentus performs Schubert's Nacht & Träume: Lieder with orchestra
One of the loveliest ways for composers to show their admiration for their predecessors is through arrangements. This recording unites a wide selection of orchestral arrangements of some of Schubert’s best-loved songs. |
The Belcea Quartet play Berg, Webern and Schoenberg
Ives • Berg • Webern
Perhaps no other Russian concert pianist today commands quite the range of Alexei Lubimov, all the way from early music on period instrument to Stockhausen, John Cage – and, not least, Charles Ives. This recording of the Concord Sonata (No. 2) – Ives’s vast tribute to the ‘Transcendentalist’ worthies of that New England town – dates from 1997.
Schoenberg • Webern
Originally a string sextet, Arnold Schoenberg’s earliest and still most nearly popular masterpiece Verklärte Nacht has been as frequently recorded in its later full string orchestra version. The Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne cannot quite generate the ‘transfigured night’ sheen of Herbert von Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic, and their new account under Heinz Holliger unfolds at relatively steady tempos, with more compositional logic than late Romantic passion, though it is very clear in detail.
Mahler, Stravinsky, Webern: Mahler: Symphony No. 6; Stravinsky: Le chant du rossignol; Webern: Passacaglia for Orchestra; Variations for Orchestra
Noone should doubt the admirable principles and standards of this first-class European youth project, inaugurated in 2004 by Pierre Boulez and Michael Haefliger. But in terms of repertoire, Boulez has been here already on CD. While his Webern may have both lushed- and sharpened-up, it’s the same story as before with Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Yet it lacks the Vienna Philharmonic’s tonal lustre that supported Boulez when he launched his Mahler adventure.
Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2; Webern: Six Bagatelles, Op. 9; Berg: Lyric Suite for string quartet
It may be convenient to talk of a ‘Second Viennese School’, but the way these three pieces think, what they strive to express, the colours and textures they paint – it’s all quite different. It would take a very special group of musicians to grasp all three equally well. And while the Quatuor Diotima are convincing throughout the Webern, and intermittently in the Schoenberg and Berg, their disc isn’t an all-round success.
Bernard Haitink conducts Strauss & Webern
In these live performances from 2008, Bernard Haitink directs a Heldenleben full of excellent qualities, yet not quite so spellbinding or charismatic as Reiner’s. The way he delineates Strauss’s polyphony is very impressive, bringing out the counterpoints and subsidiary voices with nothing short of exemplary clarity.