First Recordings: the Berg and Schönberg Violin Concertos, and More

Two of the most notable 20th century violin concertos were commissioned by the same instrumentalist, Louis Krasner, within a year or two of one another, during his relatively brief period as a soloist before he went into orchestra work and then teaching.

The composers were two of the three leading lights of the Second Viennese School. One, Alban Berg, produced a work that is noted for its intense beauty and emotion. Arnold Schönberg's concerto is mainly famed for its difficulty - although it too is intensely emotional.

Louis Krasner

Krasner (1903-95) was born in Russia but moved to the US as a child. A New England Conservatory graduate and veteran of engagements in Europe, he commissioned Berg's concerto when he was just 32. Berg had some difficulty writing it, but soon, grieving over the loss of a family friend, young Manon Gropius, the daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler, he wrote his famous concerto, which he dedicated to "Dem Andenken eines Engels" ("The Memory of an Angel"). It was to be the last work Berg completed before his own death.

Manon Gropius

Krasner premiered the work in Barcelona in 1936, following Berg's death. The concert was to have been conducted by the third member of the Schonberg circle, Anton Webern, but in the event Hermann Scherchen led the orchestra. Krasner then took the work to London for a private concert with the BBC Symphony and Webern. That performance was recorded for the violinist and has appeared on record, albeit in fairly poor sound. In fact, I had refurbished a dub of that version, and old friend David Federman asked me if I would present it here. I'm waiting for a better copy of the release to arrive and then should be able to do so.

Alban Berg

In the meantime, this post contains the first recording of the work, also performed by Krasner, with the Cleveland Orchestra and its then music director, Artur Rodziński, in 1940. It's quite a good performance, acclaimed upon its initial release on 78s and then on LP in 1954, when it was coupled with the Schönberg concerto, which Krasner had premiered in 1940 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski. The Schönberg recording was in 1952 with the New York Philharmonic and Dimitri Mitropoulos.

C.J. Luten wrote in the American Record Guide: "The Berg concerto is a master's masterpiece: Krasner (for whom the work was written) and Rodziński give a devoted performance... It is intensely serious, deeply felt, and beautiful of sound. It also has an expressive coherence uncommon among the works of the Viennese dodecaphonists. 

Artur Rodziński

"How different is the force of Berg's concerto compared with Schönberg’s (written in 1935 a year before the former). The Schönberg concerto (superbly performed and recorded) is deadly serious, darkly emotional, intensely intricate, and fiendish to play. Its expression is, however, ever so ambiguous; and its tortured invention ever so difficult to follow."

Not every critic was as baffled by the Schönberg. Arthur Berger, himself a leading composer, took to the Saturday Review and blithely opined: "I wonder if the unwarranted intellectual processes so often attributed now to the contemporary composer are not really, in many cases, in the mind of the listener - the calculated effort, namely, that we must exert in any new and challenging situation, whether it is the apartment we have just rented, the new route we take to drive to the country, or the strange language in which we order dinner abroad." Oh, OK.

Arnold Schönberg

Berger goes on to dismiss the Berg concerto as an comfortable piece: "[I]f its emotional appeal now seems thoroughly patent it is because, to start with, its moods were not particularly elusive - pervasive languor and desolateness gently fluctuating - and it is also because we no longer need exert ourselves much to grasp the idiom in which they are embodied."

Meanwhile, he faults the Schönberg because he "failed to use reason as a check upon feelings so abundant and intense that they overflowed the bounds of judicious form. Thus, instead of the impact of a well-unified structure, we carry away the memory of some lucid and imaginative scoring and of the tenuous quality of such passages as the approach to the first cadenza and the Mahleresque opening of the andante. Few details of the Berg are of such rarefied beauty."

The last words go to Alfred Frankenstein of High Fidelity: "[The Schönberg concerto] is colossally difficult for the soloist and almost equally difficult for the supporting ensemble and for the hearer, but what comes out of this collaboration is one of the most devastatingly dramatic symphonic compositions of the twentieth century. The Berg concerto, on the other hand, is a lyric work. As everyone knows, it was composed as a requiem for a young girl, and its mood is one of exaltation and ethereal expressiveness. No better contrast between Schönberg and Berg could be provided, especially since the performances are uniquely authoritative and masterly. Fine recording, too."

Dimitri Mitropoulos and Louis Krasner following a 1954 performance of the Schönberg concerto in Munich, courtesy of Alexandros Rigas

Louis Krasner was to go on to become the concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony from 1944 to 1949, during Mitropoulos' tenure there, and then a teacher at Syracuse University and the New England Conservatory. His lasting legacy is commissioning these two masterworks and several other notable compositions, including concertos by Alfredo Casella and Roger Sessions, and shorter works by Henry Cowell and Roy Harris.

A word about the LP cover: The 1930 drawing by Paul Klee is titled, "Ausgang der Narren," that is, procession of fools or jesters. It is may be an ironic depiction of carnival time, or it may be an oblique commentary on politics, but it is not related to the music. It is, however, preferable to the cover below.

Schönberg's Erwartung

In 2014 I posted another Schönberg work, his 1909 Expressionist monodrama Erwartung (Expectation), with soprano Dorothy Dow and again the New York Philharmonic and Dimitri Mitropoulos. I've now reworked the sound on that recording, which is backed by Ernst Křenek's Symphonic Elegy (In Memory of Anton von Webern), while greatly expanding the commentary.

Dimitri Mitropoulos

There, too, I quote Arthur Berger: "Erwartung stems from an intermediate period separating Schoenberg’s frankly post-Wagnerian stage from his ultimate crystallization of twelve-tone technique. The Tristanesque contours evocative of love-death and frustration had not yet been subjected to the compression and abstraction that makes them, in his later music [e.g., the Violin Concerto], barely recognizable as such."

The work is not easy listening. C.J. Luten: "Erwartung is shocking, violent, and more than a little morbid. It concerns a mature woman, who, upon taking a midnight stroll through the forest, runs into the dead body of her lover. The words of the play are the thoughts which occur to the protagonist throughout the 25-minute course of action."

If this intrigues you, please do visit the original post for more information. The download link is both there and in the comments to this post.

Mitropoulos Conducts Schönberg and Křenek

Continuing our exploration of Dimitri Mitropoulos' recordings, we encounter Arnold Schönberg's expressionist Erwartung from 1909 and Ernst Křenek's Symphonic Elegy (In Memory of Anton von Webern), which dates from 1946.

You might expect that these works would have appealed to the modernist Mitropoulos, but his biographer William Trotter claims that the Schoenberg was the source of a crisis of confidence for the composer.

"I am wondering sometimes if this kind of distorted and screwy beauty is of any transcendental value," Mitropoulos wrote to his great friend Katy Katsoyanis. She sensibly replied, "It's very natural, when you are battling desperately with one of these problematic creations, to question whether they are worth all that effort; your mission, however, is to play them, solving their problems, explaining them to the audience."

Dimitri Mitropoulos: a famed, if conflicted interpreter of the Second Viennese School

At this, the conductor was a master; he and the New Yorkers make Schönberg sound as effortless as Schubert. The concerts leading up to this recording were praised by the critics, and even the audience was pleased. You can hear why in this taping from November 19, 1951, from Columbia's 30th Street Studio. Dorothy Dow is fully in command of the ungrateful part of the protagonist in this overwrought monodrama from the pen of Marie Pappenheim.

Dorothy Dow

The critic C.J. Luten wrote, "Erwartung is shocking, violent, and more than a little morbid. It concerns a mature woman, who, upon taking a midnight stroll through the forest, runs into the dead body of her lover. The words of the play are the thoughts which occur to the protagonist throughout the 25-minute course of action."

Actually, Pappenheim and Schönberg were of two minds about the composition. Schönberg did suggest it, but he claims he gave the outline to the author; she says he did not. In the event, the composer thought of the work as expressing a heightened emotional state consistent with the scenario. Pappenheim, perhaps with an assist from later scholars, seemed to believe it had to do with a woman whose mental state was already in turmoil from her place in Viennese society, and "whose tortured emotions are symptoms of an illness she could have avoided by taking possession of her emotional life." (See Bryan Simms' article "Whose Idea was Erwartung?" for more.)

The 1909 work is a prime example of Expressionism, and has been likened both to the Expressionist writers of the era, and to such painters as Kokoschka, Kandinsky and the Der blaue Reiter circle. The composer himself was a talented artist who exhibited his works at the time.

Chaim Soutine - Mad Woman (1920), Schoenberg - Blaues Selbstportrait (1910)

Musically, Erwartung looks both back and forward. Writing in The Saturday Review, composer Arthur Berger noted, "Erwartung stems from an intermediate period separating Schönberg's frankly post-Wagnerian stage from his ultimate crystallization of twelve-tone technique. The Tristanesque contours evocative of love-death and frustration had not yet been subjected to the compression and abstraction that makes them, in his later music, barely recognizable as such... 

Arnold Schoenberg

"Instrumental colors are conceived with utmost imagination and aural sensitivity, and do much to establish the eerie atmosphere. But they almost never overpower the singer. The vocal line constantly inflects the word, its sound and feeling, and the background is a judicious commentary of chamber music."

And of course, Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. C. J. Luten observed, "Those who admire Alban Berg's powerful Wozzeck, and who do not know Erwartung, will have quite a surprise when they hear this recording. They will find, I think, a remarkable similarity in style, expression, and especially in harmony and instrumentation." Berg was one of the three principal figures of the Second Viennese School, along with Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and his Wozzeck and Lulu are the most noted Expressionist operas.

Ernst Křenek

The companion work on this LP is impressive as well. Mitropoulos had become acquainted with Křenek when the conductor was in Minneapolis and the composer was on the faculty of Hamline University in adjacent St. Paul, and consistently championed Křenek's works. 

During his career, the composer wrote in many styles, but Alfred Frankenstein observed that the Elegy "is a legitimate son of Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht. It is a work for string orchestra of great character and expressive resonance." The recording dates from April 21, 1951, also from the 30th Street Studios.

The sound on both sides is excellent, and has now been remastered in ambient stereo (September 2023). The download newly includes many reviews, notes on Schönberg and his music by Robert Craft, and the text and an English translation of Erwartung.