Customer Reviews

Berg: Violin Concerto / Schoenberg: Piano Concerto; Violin Concerto ~ Kubelik

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This is an excellent disc--a reissue from the '70s--and as a bonus, it's at a great price.

The Berg Concerto is great, and almost too popular: it's available in several performances.

The Schoenberg Piano Concerto is also available in serveral realizations (e.g., Uchida; Brendel; Gould). It's one of the unpopular Schoenberg's most "popular" works because, though 12-tone in form, the row used is ambigously tonal.

But the real star of this disc is the Schoenberg Violin Concerto. This is one of Schoenberg's most virtuosic pieces: it's stunningly well orchestrated, and the violin cadenzas are spectacular.
It's a 12-tone piece, but makes no consessions to older tonalities. This is such a great piece that I often wonder why some of the great violinists of our time don't play it: Perlman, for example; or Mutter--who plays the heck out of the Berg Concerto. Too difficult perhaps, for Schoenberg joked that the soloist should have a sixth finger on his/her left hand to realize the piece!

May 2008: STOP THE PRESSES...NEWS FLASH: Hilary Hahn shreds Schönberg's Violin Concerto! After working on this piece for about a decade, Ms. Hahn knows this work inside and out. Her brilliant realization is a new star in the firmament.
Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36/Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47
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This CD is containing the three most important concertos of the "Second Vienna School" founded by Schoenberg in the first half of the 20th Century.
The Violin Concerto by Alban Berg (1936) is certainly the best-known and the most often heard of the three. It is a remarkable synthesis of the classical harmonic style and the new twelve-tone style. It effortlessly merges quotations from Bach and Austrian tunes with the basically atonal structure into a beautiful and moving piece (a noble swan song indeed).
The Schoenberg concertos are more difficult. Let us start with the Violin Concerto (1936) which is very seldom played and has a reputation of being abstract and inaccessible. If you do not yet know it, just listen to it a few times. The first time it may appear to be not much more than interesting noise. The second time you may catch one or two striking phrases or even melodies. The third and forth time the interesting phrases become more and more numerous and you start thinking that the piece may not be so bad at all. The fifth time you catch the structure, the melodies and harmonies, and the noise is gone. Wonderful music has remained.
The same procedure applies to the Piano Concerto (1942), only that it is easier. Don't worry about twelve-tone music and atonality, just try listen to it as a normal piece of classical music.
You will find that all three concertos are very fine pieces, basically in the romantic tradition, not much more difficult than, say, Mahler. The problem with "modern" music (the concertos have been written more than 60 years ago!) is that they are rarely played and (as all music) can be appreciated only after repeated listening. This is why this CD is so important.
In fact, I already have the early vinyl recordings of the Piano Concerto by Glenn Gould, and of the Berg and Schoenberg Violin Concerto by Louis Krasner, who was the first to overcome the tremendous difficulties of the latter (Jascha Heifetz had returned the piece as unplayable!).
The violinists of the present record (Henryk Szeryng and Zvi Zeitlin) are very fine musicians. The pianist, Alfred Brendel, lives up to his reputation as a poetic performer of romantic music, from Schubert to Liszt. Listening to their play, you will forget about virtuosity and hear only music of exquisite beauty.
The orchestral colours are essential to this music. Rafael Kubelik is an inspiring conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
This record is unique.

Helmut Moritz, Graz (Austria)

Don't you just love it when classic recordings get reissued on CD at a budget price?! Such is the case with this title in the new "Universal Classics" series featuring Berg and Schoenberg Concertos, originally made in the early 1970s for Deutsche Grammophon. I fell in love with conductor Rafael Kubelik years ago after being introduced to his recordings of Dvorak, and he produces the same glowing results here. Of course performing with first rate soloists and orchestras is also key -- Szeryng and the Berlin Philharmonic on the Berg VC, Brendel and the Bavarian RSO on the Schoenberg PC, and Zeitlin and the Berliners once more on the Schoenberg VC. With budget lines being aimed at classical beginners, I'm not sure how many of them will opt to buy these 20th Century masterpieces, often wrongly maligned as dissonant and unlistenable. But I'll just be happy with the fact that three great recordings have resurfaced at an inexpensive price.

While I have not yet decided how I feel about twelve-tone music in general (some of it I like, and some (i.e. Webern and Boulez) I don't know if I'll ever understand), I LOVE the music on this CD. Berg's Violin Concerto is relatively "easy" to listen to (for a twelve-tone piece, that is) and is absolutely beautiful. It hovers on the edges of conventional tonality and features music of incredible intensity and loveliness. For this reason, it is, I think, a good place for the "twelve-tone beginner" to start listening to music of the twentieth century. Schoenberg's pieces on this CD are less accessible, but are also masterpieces. The piano concerto, in particular, is a remarkable work, and is well worth the repeated listening necessary to understand and appreciate it. Again, this is not easy music, but is music that will reward careful and concentrated listening.

Not much to add here. It is very good that Universal keeps this one in stock, even if the commercial potential is not the greatest. You get immense value for money here:
Szeryng under Kubelik plays the Berg concerto just as nicely as Perlman under Ozawa.
I have never heard another recording of the piano concerto (Sch'nberg), so here I have no idea if there are better recordings out there.
The symphonic style of the Schoenberg violin concerto is very well served by Kubelik's baton. If this action-filled, but highly organized, music gives you trouble - so it did for me about ten years ago - don't give up, because it becomes very exciting and will never let you down when you finally arrives to appreciate it.

I've always thought Berg's violin concerto was the dreariest music ever written and it's taken over ten years for me to find it less so primarly due to the orchestral accompaniment and orchestration but the violin does SING in this piece it's mournful song and Szeryng's playing supported me through this piece beautifully. I will return to it as it challenges me. Moving on to the much livelier Schoenberg concertos which embrace the classic concept of a concerto while Berg's is definitely a radical move away from convention. I've always liked the piano concerto which is helped by a rather piquant orchestration, lovely string playing and poignant winds. Brendel plays this work magnificently although some feel he has been surpassed by Uchida whose recording I like a great deal, conducted by Boulez. Not grim as one would expect having been written after fleeing the Nazis and if memory serves me correctly I believe Bernstein said it had it's share of in jokes we call triads thanks perhaps to sunny California. The violin concerto, once again beautifully played by Szeryng, is both songful and diverse, sensitive use of woodwinds, I swear the clarinet plays a melody, usually declamatory brass, over all orchestrated to the point. It's been 70 years or more since these pieces were written and they no longer seem quite so frightful. If you think Schoenberg was a no talent hack, listen more carefully.

This is a budget re-release on the Universal Classics label of this album from Deutsche Grammphon in the 1970s. The original DG includes a booklet with liner notes, this release does not. Either way, you get a great three-concerto disc featuring Rafeal Kubelik conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Outside the US, the budget re-release is on Universal's Eloquence label, and retains secondary DG branding.

The performances are all first-rate. The disc starts out with a terrific Violin Concerto by Alban Berg with Polish virtuoso Henryk Szeryng as soloist, delivering a very lively performance. The tempi are brisk, with the whole concerto at under 25 minutes, compared to about 27-29 minutes for some of the other major recordings. I love the lyricism of the Berg concerto, and that comes through strongly in this recording.

Next is the Schoenberg piano concerto with Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel as soloist. Brendel has been called a cerebral pianist; I'm not sure about that. His delivery and that of the orchestra are excellent, and the concerto lives up to its reputation as one of the most "tonal" works in the 12-tone repertoire.

The disc closes with a fantastic rendition of the Schoenberg Violin Concerto featuring Israeli violinist Zvi Zeitlin. This performance is really spectacular, and it makes me want to hear more Zeitlin. Of course one of the questions that comes up today with older performances of the Schoenberg concerto is how they measure up to Hillary Hahn's runaway hit record from a few years ago. I listened to them back-to-back, and I loved them both. Hahn's recording has much faster tempi, and come in almost three minutes under this version. Both are good readings and great performances, Hahn's is livelier and more exciting, but this has a thoughtfulness that is also great.

A fantastic recording all around that offers some of the most accessible 12-tone music out there. Highly recommended!

When I played my original copy this evening I noticed a number of skips and so thought it might be time to get a new copy--at $3.13!!! But more importantly, I think for the first time I finally enjoyed and understood the Schoenberg Violin Concerto, which had always seemed a little forebidding and stark. As one reviewer noted, you have to listen to these pieces many times before they begin to resonate, but this again belies Schoenberg's reputation as an inaccessible composer. In fact, these pieces no longer seem harsh and dissonant at all. Perhaps it's because I was listening to some Elliot Carter just before, the lyricism of Berg and Schoenberg shone through even more. They truly were "super-romantic expressionists".

...especially given the price...the recordings are well done and the performances are excellent...Schoenberg's a bit hard to swallow but he's probably analagous to spinach -- a little bit now and then is good for you.