Word: wozzeck
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...universal verdict of the critics who have heard it, Alban Berg's atonal opera Wozzeck is the finest opera composed in the last 40 years.* Berg, an Austrian, finished Wozzeck in 1921, and it had immediate success in Europe. Oddly enough, in the U.S., it has had only one stage production (in 1931), and only a few doughty conductors have nibbled away at concert excerpts. One reason: its 15 scenes are costly to stage. More important, although Wozzeck is now more than 25 years old, most opera impresarios fear that, musically, it is still 25 years ahead...
...crowded Carnegie Hall last week, Manhattan music lovers heard the next best thing to a stage production of Wozzeck-a brilliant concert version of the whole opera by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony and first-rate soloists under Dimitri Mitropoulos...
Berg: Lyric Suite (the Juilliard String Quartet; Columbia, 2 sides LP). Austrian Atonalist Alban Berg, who died in 1935; is rapidly coming into his own. His opera Wozzeck is enjoying a spate of concert performances (Columbia and Artist Records have recorded excerpts), and it will be a featured work at this year's Salzburg Festival. The Lyric Suite, composed six years later (1926), comes far more strangely to the ear, is not recommended for those not already pleased to make Berg's acquaintance. Performance and recording: excellent...
...Gamble? Some advance-guard music lovers have complained that instead of spending money on works such as Don Carlo and The Flying Dutchman, which were never highly profitable, Bing should have gambled the same money on a more contemporary work, such as Alban Berg's formidable atonal opera, Wozzeck. Bing's answer to that is that he would like to do Wozzeck, but he cannot afford right now to overlook the fate of another contemporary opera, Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, which was withdrawn after two seasons, so offended one opera lover that he spat...
...concerned with where he stood in the great operatic tradition. He had not discovered anything brand-new, and he knew it. Paul Hindemith, Ernst Krenek and the late Kurt Weill had broken the ground for him in Germany in the '20s. Austrian Atonalist Alban Berg's gloomy Wozzeck had moved opera musically miles from the Verdis and Monteverdis...