Alban Berg under the microscope

These reductions, by John Rea and Andreas N. Tarkmann, have a magnifying glass effect: being used to hearing these works played by a larger orchestral mass, one may find oneself surprised or even disoriented in certain passages, but they have the merit of focusing more attention on the details and texture of the scores. This is the speciality of Pierre-Alain Monot, until recently titular conductor of the NEC, who is renowned for his crystalline diction and transparent, precise legibility of the more complex polyphonies, which here highlights the modernity of Alban Berg's language.

This recording also recalls the historical link between the town of Winterthur and the Austrian composer: in 1927, Alban Berg was the guest of Werner Reinhart, the famous patron and friend who, a few years earlier, had commissioned him to write reductions of Wozzeck for piano. The conductor Hermann Scherchen, in 1930, represents the Three Fragments from Wozzeckwhich we find on this recording, sung by Bénédicte Tauran in a particularly successful arrangement: the sounds of the Ringel Ringel Rosenkranz, from the final act, are magnificent.

To accompany these FragmentsThe recording also includes two other essential scores from Berg's catalog. The Three pieces for orchestra (in John Rea's version commissioned by the Musikkollegium) form a magmatic work in which the boundary between chaos and sound organization is labile, just like that of the echoes of the valleys found in Reigen and the nightmarish, expressionist maelstrom of the Marsch finale. Finally comes the magnificent Concerto in memory of an angelfor violin and orchestra, here with the intimate playing of soloist Rahel Cunz. Alban Berg composed this masterpiece in 1935, still reeling from the death of Manon Gropius, daughter of his friend Alma Mahler, and in which he sought to reconcile dodecaphony and tonality.

Alban Berg: Three Pieces for Orchestra op. 6, Three Fragments from Wozzeck op. 7, Violin Concerto. Rahel Cunz, Violin ; Bénédicte Tauran, Soprano ; Musikkollegium Winterthur, Pierre-Alain Monot, Conductor. Dabringhaus und Grimm MDG 901 1913-6