Word: alban
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...most minute patterns of life. They expressed this in a new voice of polychromatic sounds of momentary durations. The fluid immediacy of impresssonism and the starker psychology of expressionism began to lose their distinctiveness and prove permeable and complementary. The last magnificent statements of the musical expressionistic esthetic were Alban Berg's operas Wozzeck (1921) and Lulu (1935), and his Violin Concerto (1935), an elegy written upon the death on Mahler's daughter Manon. The neurasthenic romanticism of Mahler was transmuted in these works to a testament and a valedictory. The plasticity of musical idioms was clearly responding...
...Eighth Symphony is actually well worth taking up the dare. It shows that Sessions at 71 has completely absorbed the serialistic principles laid down by Arnold Schoenberg, and now uses them with rare freedom, spontaneity and expressivity. His orchestral colors look back to Alban Berg, but he is visionary in the way he creates melody through the interaction of contrapuntal strands and in the way he achieves the proper symphonic contrast of mood without the usual resort to repetition. Just as his earlier music is beginning to find favor today-notably the Violin Concerto-the Eighth will undoubtedly have...
...concerts and less on big-name soloists -by far the most significant is the generous sampling of provocative modern works. Already this season he has conducted the American premiere of a 1957 violin concerto by French Composer Serge Nigg, and in the months ahead he will present music by Alban Berg, William Schuman and Charles Ives. "Contemporary music, on the whole, is as good as what was written ] 00 or 200 years ago," he insists...
...ALBAN BERG: WOZZECK (2 LPs; CBS Masterworks). To many students of music, Berg's masterpiece represents an enduring statement about human nature and musical revolution. To others, it is nothing but a stumble through an atonal desert. This recording will be appreciated by Berg's admirers, for Pierre Boulez's conducting is impeccable, and so is the courage of Walter Berry, who convincingly sings his way to murder and death through the cactus-like orchestration...
...Lincoln Center official, "the most exciting opera company in the world." Last week the Hamburgers, the first foreign company invited to appear in the Metropolitan's new house, justified their advance billing by stylishly bringing off a daunting array of New York premieres: a vividly atmospheric Lulu, by Alban Berg; a vocally polished and forceful Mathis der Maler, by Paul Hindemith; and a flowing and convincingly dramatic Jacobovsky and the Colonel, by Giselher Klebe...