Produced by Thomas Frost
Side 1
BERG: LULU SUITE (Complete) (33:35)
I—Rondo: Andante und Hymne
II—Ostinato: Allegro
III—Lied der Lulu: Comodo é
Luisa De Sett, Soprano
IV—Variationen: Moderato
V—Adagio: Sostenuto; Lento; Grave
Side 2
SCHOENBERG: THEME AND VARIATIONS,
Op. 43B (AscaPp—11:42)
WEBERN: IM SOMMERWIND (ascap—12:18)
WEBERN: THREE PIECES FOR ORCHESTRA
(Posthumous) (ascaP—s:08)
I—Bewegt
II—Sehr bewegte Viertel
III—Alla breve
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Alban Berg began work on his opera Lulu in 1928, three years
after the highly successful premiére in Berlin of his master-
piece, Wozzeck. Again, he turned to the theater for his libretto:
Lulu is based on two tragedies by Frank Wedekind, “Erdgeist”
and “Die Biichse der Pandora.” It is the study of a woman de-
scribed by one critic as “a heroine of fourth dimensional
power . .. who destroys all that she attracts. She is a phenom-
enon of nature, beyond good or evil, a complete cosmos, alto-
gether removed from ordinary comprehension.”
When Berg died, on December 24, 1935, only two acts of Lulu
had been finished, and he was still in the process of orches-
trating the third act. However, in 1934, Berg had drawn an
orchestral suite of five sections from the music for Lulu, and
this “Lulu Symphony,” as it is sometimes called, was first per-
formed in Berlin on November 30, 1934, under the direction
of Erich Kleiber, who had conducted the highly successful
premiére of Wozzeck. In May of 1934, Berg had written to
Kleiber: “I would like to inform you of the following: I am
now making a suite out of Lulu that will last approximately
twenty-five minutes. ... Do you have the desire and the op-
portunity and the courage to undertake the first performance?”
The Lulu Suite was received with favor at the Berlin premiere.
And, less than two weeks before his death, the composer took
part in the successful Vienna premiére of the Suite.
Eugene Ormandy knew Alban Berg personally and has set
down the following account of the composer during the period
in which he was at work on Lulu: “I met Alban Berg in the
early 1930’s....He was working feverishly on Lulu and
showed me some of the score. At that time, I was not as well
versed in the twelve-tone school of music as I am now, and I
often asked him questions about his writing. He always gave
me answers that were logical, intelligent and understandable.
He was a disciple of Schoenberg—to him, Schoenberg could
do no wrong.
“During one of our conversations, I mentioned to Berg how
nice it would be if modern composers would take some of the
important sections of their operas and compile them into suites
that could be played at concerts. He told me that he was think-
ing of doing just that with Lulu. After Berg’s sudden death, a
suite for orchestra from Lulu, including the soprano aria from
the second act, was published. I conducted this Suite for the
first time a number of years ago, at the request of the Vienna
Philharmonic. Some day I hope I will have the honor of con-
ducting the whole opera, for I think it is one of the great
masterpieces of the century.”
The Rondo of the Lulu Suite is drawn from Act I of.the opera
and has been called by Berg’s biographer, Willi Reich, “the
lyrical main piece of the whole work, the proclamation of
Berg’s special affection for his last operatic figure.” The
Ostinato is an accompaniment to a filmed sequence—Scene 1 to
Scene 2 of Act II—designed to dramatize Lulu’s decline into
murder and imprisonment. “Lied der Lulu” is the heroine’s dis-
closure in Act II of her complete amorality: “If men have killed
themselves for my sake, that does not lessen my value. You
knew why you married me, just as I knew why I married you.
... And if you have sacrificed your old age to me, you had the
whole of my youth in payment. I have never pretended to be
anything other than what I was taken for. And no one ever
took me for anything other than what I am.”
(“Lied der Lulu” was dedicated by Berg to Anton Webern; the
opera itself is dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg.)
The theme of the Variationen was taken by Berg from a volume
of lute songs collected by Frank Wedekind. It is a Berlin street-
walker’s song and appears in the opera as a violin solo near
the beginning of Act III. The Adagio is the finale of Act III, in
which Lulu meets death at the hands of Jack the Ripper.
The market for band music has always been a lucrative one,
and publishers are constantly looking for works to expand the
repertoire. When Arnold Schoenberg was approached by his
American publisher in the early 1940’s with the suggestion
that he write a piece for band, the composer greeted the idea
with enthusiasm. However, when the publisher received
Schoenberg’s manuscript, he found that it called for the instru-
mental virtuosity of first-rate professionals, not the average
competency of a musician in a school band. Schoenberg con-
sequently revised the work for full symphony orchestra, and
the work had its premiére by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
on October 20, 1944.
Schoenberg described his [heme and Variations as follows:
“In general, the variations proceed in the traditional manner,
using motival and harmonic features of the theme, thus pro-
ducing new themes of contrasting character and mood. In the
first two variations, the tempo increases considerably. Varia-
tion III is an adagio of a more songful character. Variation IV
is a stylized waltz. Variation V, molto moderato cantabile, is
a canon in inversion. Variation VI is very fast (alla breve) and
violent in character, while the texture is contrapuntal. Varia-
tion VII approaches the style of a chorale prelude. The finale,
as usual in classical music, adds a number of ideas, which vary
only part of the theme. The treatment is mostly contrapuntal,
and the aim toward a final climax is predominant.”
Both Im Sommerwind and Three Pieces for Orchestra owe
their presence in the Webern catalog to Dr. Hans Molden-
hauer, musicologist and founder-director of the Moldenhauer
Archive in Spokane, Washington. In 1961, a number of unpub-
lished manuscripts were acquired by Dr. Moldenhauer from
the composer’s family in Austria, and among these was Im
Sommerwind, written in 1904, a few months before the com-
poser’s twenty-first birthday. The work, subtitled Idyll, was
inspired by a poem by the novelist, essayist and philosopher
Bruno Wille and is, as its title indicates, a description of a
summer day in the country.
Im Sommerwind is one of the few works by Webern that
utilizes the full resources of a modern symphony orchestra.
It is suffused with post-Wagnerian Romanticism and also
shows the influence of Richard Strauss and of the early work
of Schoenberg, Webern’s beloved teacher. The work received
its world premiére by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia
Orchestra on May 25, 1962, at the First International Webern
Festival, held during the World’s Fair at Seattle.
Three Pieces for Orchestra was discovered by Dr. Molden-
hauer in a Vienna suburb in 1965. While searching for a bust
of Webern in the attic of the childhood home of the composer’s
daughter-in-law, a large group of forgotten Webern manu-
scripts was brought to light. Among them were scores dating
from 1899 through 1925.
Dr. Moldenhauer has provided the following information on
the origin of Three Pieces for Orchestra: “In several letters
written to Arnold Schoenberg during the autumn of 1913,
Anton von Webern referred to a series of orchestral pieces on
which he was working at the time. By October 12, six of these
pieces had been written; on November 6, the number had in-
creased to eight. In a letter of November 24, Webern told that
he planned to extend the cycle to comprise nine pieces in all,
but on December 22, he wrote that eleven pieces had been
composed. As a Christmas present, he sent Schoenberg the
score of four pieces from the group. ... [While this recording
was in production, Dr. Moldenhauer advised Columbia Rec-
ords that he had uncovered new information indicating that,
in 1911 and 1913, Webern composed two sets of such pieces,
totaling eighteen, rather than eleven pieces. |
“The orchestra pieces that Webern refers to in his letters are
all of the aphoristic type favored by him during this period.
Five of the pieces have long been known as his Opus 10.
Among them, the fourth piece is the most minute of all, tak-
ing only nineteen seconds for performance—a ne plus ultra of
formal compression and emotional concentration, the very
antithesis of the expansive rhetoric of the late-Romantic era.
To be sure, the composer was then reaching a pivotal point in
his artistic development. On November 6, 1913, he wrote: ‘I
am at work again on my cycle of orchestra pieces and have
now arrived at No. 8. I find myself forming them into com-
paratively larger movements again.’ ”
Three Pieces for Orchestra also received its world premiére
by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Phila-
delphia, on April 14, 1967.
—Chris Nelson
Literary Editor
Columbia Masterworks
Engineering: Edward T. Graham and John Guerriere.
Library of Congress catalog card numbers R67-3604, 3605, 3606 apply to
ML 6441/R67-3607, 3608, 3609 apply to MS 7041.
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿