In February 1935, the last year of his life, the Austrian composer Alban Berg was commissioned to compose a concerto for violin and orchestra. The request came from Louis Krasner, a Russian-American violinist who would later build a notable career performing first auditions of the works of his contemporary colleagues. The commission offered was no small sum. But at the time, the fifty-year-old Berg was working intensively on his opera Lulu and, rigorous and methodical as he was, he rejected the proposal. However, Krasner had touched on a sensitive point. For dodecaphonic music to reach a broad audience, he had said, there was nothing better than giving it to them in a friendly format, a concerto. The maestro had doubts. A deep tragedy would finally convince him.
Now we must talk a little about Alma Mahler. Gustav's widow married the famous architect Walter Gropius in 1915. The relationship, from which a daughter, Marion, was born, ended in 1920. Despite the brevity of the bond, Alban Berg built a solid friendship with the couple, adding to it a great affection for little Marion, who was four years old at the time of their separation.
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| Alma Mahler, Gropius and Marion (1918) |
Berg's doubts were dispelled when he learned that spring that eighteen-year-old Marion Gropius had died of polio on April 22. Absorbing all the creative energy that such a tragedy could inspire, he resolved to compose a musical memorial, to honor little Marion. "Before this terrible year is over," he wrote to Alma, "you will be able to hear a score which I will dedicate 'to the memory of an angel' and which encapsulates what I feel and cannot express today." Leaving aside the last act of his opera Lulu (which he will fail to finish), the maestro devoted himself with all his strength to the composition of the violin concerto.
"To the memory of an angel"
Alban Berg usually needed about two years to compose a work of a certain scale. This time, although his health was not the best, he only needed four months. On August 11, the concerto was finished. On the first page of the manuscript, he wrote: "To the memory of an angel", as he had promised. The dedication was extended, of course, to the violinist Krasner, who premiered it the following year in Barcelona. Alban Berg did not get to hear it. He passed away on December 24, 1935.
Violin Concerto
The work, Berg's only concerto for solo instruments, is developed according to the principles of dodecaphonic music that the composer learned from his teacher Arnold Schoenberg. Yet it has become the composer's most popular work, and the most programmed on stage. And despite its daring combination of tonal and atonal language, it is also his most accessible work.
Movements:
There are two, although each includes another section that is played without interruption. According to Berg told his biographer, in the first movement he tried to translate the girl's character traits into musical characters. The second is somewhat less pastoral, perhaps nightmarish, depicting the catastrophe of death. The work ends without fuss. It is not easy to find another work in which the silence that follows the last bars is as important as the one "heard" here.
00:00 Andante - Allegretto
11:37 Allegro - Adagio
The German violinist of Russian origin, Alina Pogostkina, is accompanied by the Gothenburg Symphony under the baton of the German conductor David Afkham.
