Vienna: Music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg

Arnold Schoenberg (Composer), Anton Webern (Composer), Alban Berg (Composer), Antal Dorati (Conductor), Harold Lawrence (Conductor), London Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Helga Pilarczyk (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Helga Pilarczyk
• Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Antal Dorati, Harold Lawrence
• Composer: Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg
• Audio CD (September 12, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Philips
• ASIN: B0000057KO
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,838 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: 1. Vorgefühle (Premonitions)

2. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: 2. Vergangenes (Yesteryears)

3. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: 3. Sommermorgen an einem See (Summer Morning by a Lake)

4. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: 4. Peripetie (Peripetia)

5. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: 5. Das obligate Rezitativ (The Obligatory Recitative)

6. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 10

7. Pieces (3) for orchestra, Op. 6: 1. Praeludium (Preludio)

8. Pieces (3) for orchestra, Op. 6: 2. Reigen (Round Dance)

9. Pieces (3) for orchestra, Op. 6: 3. Marsch (March)

10. Lulu-Suite, 5 symphonic pieces from the opera for soprano & orchestra ('Lulu-Symphonie'): 1. Rondo

11. Lulu-Suite, 5 symphonic pieces from the opera for soprano & orchestra ('Lulu-Symphonie'): 2. Ostinato

12. Lulu-Suite, 5 symphonic pieces from the opera for soprano & orchestra ('Lulu-Symphonie'): 3. Lulu's Song

13. Lulu-Suite, 5 symphonic pieces from the opera for soprano & orchestra ('Lulu-Symphonie'): 4. Variations

14. Lulu-Suite, 5 symphonic pieces from the opera for soprano & orchestra ('Lulu-Symphonie'): 5. Adagio

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As If It Was Just Music, Which It Is, March 31, 2001

By 

Eugene G. Barnes (Dunn Loring, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vienna: Music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg (Audio CD)

Here are some full-bodied orchestral works from the Big Three composers of twelve-tone music (though the pieces may not all be strictly twelve-tone). You can load this CD into your multi-disc player along with other early Twentieth Century pieces that are not twelve-tone and they will fit right in. The secret is Dorati's approach to this music: He treats them just as if they were regular pieces of music, not something to examine as an historical curiosity, not something to work hard at exposing all the details (at the expense of each piece's wholeness), and certainly not something to worship. They're just naturally and sympathetically played, and all those nice details show up anyway.

The recordings harken from that era when Mercury was using the 35 MM film system of recording, and the good news about that is that the "tape hiss" you would normally associate with a recording from this era is tremendously low. All you get is the music.

The final offering, the suite from the opera "Lulu", has an added soprano, Helga Pilarczyk. She is a committed participant, although her highs are not too great. But what the heck, she is hardly given anything to sing, so don't let that hold you back. Altogether, this is a startlingly good CD, 75 minutes of terrific music played the way you most want to hear it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dorati does it again, September 7, 2002

By 

Phil Avetxori - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vienna: Music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg (Audio CD)

Here is nice collection of orchestral works by the second Viennese school, the big three of atonality:Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. Antal Dorati, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, brings the same fire and verve to these touchstones of musical Modernism that was so amply displayed in his legendary recording of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre Du Printemps" with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (one of my all-time favorite classical recordings). The Schoenberg pieces are full of rich texture and intriguing rhythmic juxtapositions, definitly a good introduction to the work of this challenging composer. The concise angular miniatures of Webern's "Five Pieces" for orchestra last only a little longer than four minutes, and are stunningly concise and inventive, with nary a note wasted. These are priceless sonic jewels that rank up there with the composer's "Six Bagatelles" for string quartet in economy and invention, with an equally precise placement of silences that thunder with the same authority as the notes(if only a little softer!). Berg is a composer I'm less familiar with, but these works seem to support his reputation as the most "traditional" of the three. His pieces have a lushness and density of sound not found in most of Schoenberg, and certainly not in Webern. They strike me as less inventive than the works of the other two, like Romantic music without the dramatic tonality. Consequently, Berg's works don't demand my attention like those of Schoenberg and Webern; but a more traditional classical music listener might get more out of them than I do. All in all, a nice, well-conducted collection with surprisingly good sound (only a little tape hiss, here and there), considering that these are recordings from the early 60's.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, terrific, August 14, 2004

By 

Sungu Okan "Can Okan" (Istanbul, Istanbul Turkey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vienna: Music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg (Audio CD)

This is a very good collection of 2nd Vienna School. All works are amazing. These works are not dangerous modernly, but very effective, somewhere dramatic, too. And the performances of Antal Dorati is awesome. His London Symphony Orchestra played with emotion, powerfrul, effective. The sound quality is excellent, too.

Schoenberg's Five Pieces, Op. 16 is his one of the first atonal works. Written for large orchestra, and it is very insane, impressive, somewhere very contemplative and calm (in 2nd and 3rd pieces). But, I think the star of this CD is Alban Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra:

Berg's Three Pieces, Op. 6 is may be the most complex work of 2nd Vienna School, but it is most impressive, too. Especially, the last movement, which a funeral music written with influencing of World War I, is very effective, heavy but drammatic, touching. In last minutes there are very powerful climaxes which there is a solo for hammer! The last exploding chord of the work, which comes after a very deep deathful silence, is terrible. I think, this is may be a prophety of Berg, which means these wars will not finish, may be in next years there are more terrible wars, including atomic bomb!!

Another important work is Berg's Lulu-Suite. This suite be constitued from his second opera, as you know. It is includes, a very amazing music, Interlude-Film Music. In this movement, the curtain of 2nd Act's 1st scene falls and then a silent-non-coloured film starts with this music. It has a very interesting, but intelligent form, based on film's story: the music starts and go forward, then it arrves a centre of music, and then it goes backwards! and finishes as like starts...

It is an essential recording and at this price, a must have for any classical music lovers. Highly reccomended.