Classical Music

Classical Music

Natanael Berg (1879 - 1957) studied at the Stockholm Conservatory and was a Swedish Army veterinarian who, as a freelance musician also composed music in a Late Romantic style. Natanael Berg's colorful music is the subject of an on-going project on the CPO label.

Classical Music

This comprises 46 songs by Berg, the majority written prior to his study with Arnold Schoenberg. This is music that clearly reflects the time of it's composition, between 1901 and 1908. These songs are far too seldom heard.

Chandos presents the English language recording premiere of 'Wozzeck', Berg's powerful and fatalistic tragedy, now regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century opera. Paul Daniel and the Philharmonia Orchestra receive consistently excellent reviews in this series, and are aided by a superb cast and theatrical Chandos sound. Recorded in: Watford Colosseum 14-18 July 2002 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Michael Common (Assistant)

The 2002 production of Berg's Lulu by Richard jones is generally agreed to be one of the best things to come from troubled English National Opera in recent years. Chandos has done everyone a favour by transferring its 2005 revival lock, stock and smoking revolver from the opera house to the studio...This is important for several reasons. Lulu can seem forbidding to the uninitiated. Its amoral characters, its sordid plot, its enigmatic anti-heroine, its complex (and masterful) formal design: all these aspects repel some as much as they attract others. Yet cabaret burlesque is as integral to the opera's make-up as high operatic tragedy. Paul Daniel and the Chandos engineers don't let us forget it. Piano, saxophone and vibraphone get the prominence they deserve...Richard Stokes has rendered Wedekind's demotic text aptly and brilliantly...For Lulu in the raw, a Rosenkavalier with no underwear, I'll take this.
- Peter Quantrill, THE GRAMOPHONE

Classical Music

Classical Music

Berg: Wozzeck, Op. 7 (Sung in Italian) & Violin Concerto

Blu-ray PLUS SACD.

When Alban Berg attended the first production of Georg Buchner’s play Woyzeck, he immediately knew that he wanted to base an opera off of the story line. His opera, Wozzeck, was composed between the years 1914 and 1922, and received its debut performance in 1925. The dark storyline centers around the soldier Wozzeck, who travels through a callous and at times sadistic world that he doesn’t understand. He is tortured with medical experiments, ridiculed by his captain, and his lover, Marie, betrays him. He becomes a murderer and eventually secures his own demise. Renowned stage director Andreas Homoki brilliantly creates this dark and mysterious world, which explores the thin line between the unfathomable and ridiculous. Christian Gerhaher’s dramatic subtlety and vocal prowess is breathtaking in the title role, alongside the equally impressive Gun-Brit Barkim as Marie.

When Alban Berg attended the first production of Georg Buchner’s play Woyzeck, he immediately knew that he wanted to base an opera off of the story line. His opera, Wozzeck, was composed between the years 1914 and 1922, and received its debut performance in 1925. The dark storyline centers around the soldier Wozzeck, who travels through a callous and at times sadistic world that he doesn’t understand. He is tortured with medical experiments, ridiculed by his captain, and his lover, Marie, betrays him. He becomes a murderer and eventually secures his own demise. Renowned stage director Andreas Homoki brilliantly creates this dark and mysterious world, which explores the thin line between the unfathomable and ridiculous. Christian Gerhaher’s dramatic subtlety and vocal prowess is breathtaking in the title role, alongside the equally impressive Gun-Brit Barkim as Marie.

Gunnar Berg’s (1909-89) music has only recently become acknowledged in earnest in his native Denmark. This premiere recording of Berg’s chamber music offers unusual instrument blends including saxophone, trumpet, bass clarinet and marimba; in addition, a mezzo-soprano sings in the major work Tøbrud from 1961: a piece whose title can now be said to have taken on symbolic meaning given the renewed interest in the composer.

Berg, G.: Ar Goat / Triedra / 9 Duos / Melos I