Berg: String Quartet / Lyric Suite / Wolf: Italian Serenade
12/26/2007, 9 Tracks, 57:27
Featuring
Helene Pohl
Douglas Beilman
Gillian Ansell
Rolf Gjelsten
New Zealand String Quartet
Alban Berg
Hugo Wolf
Did you know?
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Composition History
Berg's highly expressive Lyric Suite was secretly dedicated to Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, the wife of a family friend, and embodies his feelings for her.
Compositional Technique
The final movement of the Lyric Suite is a wordless setting of Charles Baudelaire's poem 'De profundis clamavi' and has even been performed as a vocal piece.
Composer Biography
Alban Berg, like his idol Mahler, produced a limited number of works, but his catalogue contains few minor pieces and features major contributions to all principal genres.
Composition History
Berg's String Quartet, Op. 3, completed in 1910, served as both a graduation exercise and his first major exploration into non-tonal music, following his teacher Arnold Schoenberg's requirements.
Performer Biography
The New Zealand String Quartet is acclaimed internationally for its imaginative programming, including cycles of composers from Mozart to Berg, and championing works from New Zealand and the Pacific Rim.
Compositional Technique
The String Quartet, Op. 3, features a two-movement form where the first movement's ideas are developed and intensified in the second, binding them into a single, overarching entity.
Compositional Technique
The Lyric Suite has an unconventional six-movement form, where the odd-numbered movements become progressively faster and more disruptive, while the even-numbered ones become progressively slower and more intense.
