Berg: Violin Concerto | Isabelle Faust, Andris Nelsons and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra

Personal grief, musical experimentation and references to both Bach and folk tradition make Alban Berg's Violin Concerto a deeply intimate work. This performance took place during a tribute concert to conductor Claudio Abbado in April 2014 in Lucerne, just months after the conductor's death. Andris Nelsons leads the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Isabelle Faust as violin soloist.

(00:00) I. Andante. Allegretto
(12:15) II. Allegro. Adagio

Alban Berg’s (1885-1935) Violin Concerto was written in 1935 near the end of his life. It was the last complete work he composed. He began the piece after receiving a commission from the American violinist Louis Krasner. Berg dedicated the work "to the memory of an angel," the angel being Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of architect Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler, who passed away in April 1935 from polio. Although Berg used the twelve-tone technique associated with his teacher Arnold Schoenberg, he also incorporated the expressive qualities of Romantic music. The concerto includes references to folk music and the work of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) and has passages that can sound surprisingly lyrical.

The work's two-movement structure is unusual for a concerto. The second movement eventually incorporates the Bach chorale "Es ist genug" ("It is enough"), while the first movement includes a Carinthian folk melody. These contrasting references allow the music to move between youthful, almost pastoral memories and a much darker meditation on death. After the intensity of the second movement, the music gradually moves toward a feeling of release, instead of ending in tragedy.

There's also a striking coincidence between the concerto and Berg’s own final months. He completed the work in 1935, but he died in Vienna on December 24 of that same year from complications following an insect sting, before the concerto could be performed. Its premiere therefore took place posthumously in Barcelona on April 19, 1936, with Louis Krasner as soloist.

Isabelle Faust, born in Germany, is one of today’s leading violinists. The performance was particularly meaningful, since Claudio Abbado had conducted the concerto with Faust in 2011. With Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which Abbado had led many times before, the performance was a fitting tribute to a conductor who had given the festival so many memorable musical experiences.

Author: Sarah Hucal
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