Composer: Alban Berg, Egon Wellesz, Erich Zeisl
Performer: Emerson String Quartet, Renée Fleming
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Decca
Catalogue: 4788399
Release: 2015
Size: 237 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Berg: Lyric Suite – for string quartet (1926)
01. I. Allegretto gioviale
02. II. Andante amoroso
03. III. Allegro misterioso – Trio estatico
04. IV. Adagio appassionato
05. V. Presto delirando – Tenebroso
06. VI. Largo desolato
Berg: Lyric Suite For String Quartet (1926) – Version with Soprano
07. Largo desolato
Wellesz: Sonnets From The Portuguese, Op.52
08. 1. Un es geschah mir einst
09. 2. Nur drei jedoch in Gottes ganzen All vernahmen es
10. 3. Du bist da droben im Palast begehrt
11. 4. Ich denk an dich
12. 5. Mir scheint, das Angesicht der Welt verging
13. Zeisl: Komm, süsser Tod
This release unites on record for the first time America’s reigning star soprano Renée Fleming and its premier string quartet, The Emersons, to take us on a journey into the twilight world of Vienna in the 1920s and 30s in music imbued with late romanticism and burgeoning modernism.
Berg’s Lyric Suite is a work of intricate, complexity believed to have a secret dedication and to outline a secret programme relating to Berg’s affair with Franz Werfel’s sister (Werfel was married to Mahler’s widow, Alma). Theodor Adorno called the work a “latent opera” and in its sixth and final movement, the Largo desolato, Berg introduces the soprano voice and quotes Wagner’s Tristan motif to evoke his doomed, impossible love.
This was still secessionist Vienna: a world of paintings by Klimt, psychoanalysis by Freud and a musical life where you could hear Bruno Walter conduct Mahler and Clemens Krauss lead the operas of Richard Strauss.
Egon Wellesz’s highly expressive setting of Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning was one of the last works he completed before leaving Austria ahead of the Anschluss in 1938. It is heard here in its original version for soprano and string quartet. Barrett-Browning was one of the most popular English poets of the Victoria era, although Wellesz turned to German translations by Rainer Maria Rilke for his setting.
Renée Fleming is famed for her “intense and luxurious” (Evening Standard) performances of Richard Strauss and Korngold, Berg and Mahler. Her sumptuous sound is uniquely suited to this repertoire.
As Edward Seckerson wrote of her fin de siècle recital at the Barbican in 2012: “We were back in Vienna’s golden age and it seemed like that was where she had always belonged”.