If I Could Choose Only One Work By...BERG

It Would Have To Be...Wozzeck
One of the greatest and most moving statements about the human condition and the need for compassion in all of Western art.

The List So Far:
1. Ravel: Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Ballet)
2. Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
3. Schubert: String Quintet in C major
4. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
5. Mahler: Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”
6. Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
7. Debussy: Preludes for Piano (Books 1 & 2)
8: Handel: Saul
9. Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
10. Brahms: String Sextet No. 2 in G major
11. Vaughan Williams: Job
12. Bach: Goldberg Variations
13. R. Strauss: Four Last Songs
14. Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust
15. Haydn: “Paris” Symphonies (Nos. 82-87)
16. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
17. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor
18. Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor
19. Chopin: Preludes
20. Verdi: Rigoletto
21. Roussel: Symphony No. 2
22. Copland: Appalachian Spring (complete original ballet)
23. Grieg: Peer Gynt Suites Nos. 1 and 2
24. Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
25. Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2
26. Rimsky-Korsakov: Opera Suites (Scottish National Orchestra/Järvi) Chandos
27. Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire
28. Smetana: Ma Vlást
29. Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
30. Bizet: Carmen
31. Elgar: In the South
32. Sullivan: The Mikado
33. Dvořák: Symphony No. 8; Cello Concerto (Piatigorsky/Munch/Boston Symphony) RCA
34. Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies
35. Monteverdi: Orfeo
36. Scarlatti: Sonatas
37. Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op. 17

[David_Goza]

The fact that Wozzeck doesn't really formally begin, but rather simply starts - as if in medias res - coupled with the fact that it doesn't really formally end, but rather just stops, suggests that the whole thing could be looped and run through again, but this time with Franz's son - never identified by name - replaying the whole miserable story, an endless cycle of misery and abuse. That, to me, is one of the most powerful features of Wozzeck.

[marks]

The ending of the opera is shattering, the way that the music just stops like pages have been ripped out.

This whole '..choose one work..' series is incredibly thoughtful.

[daniellibin]

I love this opera. I love this choice. I love this series. Thank you.

[EricGross]

Your capsule description of Wozzeck is perfectly concise and absolutely hits the mark. The cosmic ending of the work, the profoundly unresponsive universe, possesses awesome power.

[Muzakman]

The last few times I've listened to Wozzeck, I couldn't help getting the feeling Berg cried writing whole chunks of this, he must've been emotionally shattered by it, you really feel his sympathy for all the downtrodden folk in this work, all used & abused so unsparingly. It's a work that never loses its power, it only gets more powerful the more you listen to and attempt to understand it. Berg was made to set this story to music and it's his greatest gift to us all (however great the VC is).

[barrymoore]

'Wozzeck' is, along with Debussy's 'Pelléas et Mélisande', my favorite opera. It's taut and succinct, while structured so brilliantly as music, and packs a dramatic wallop. It's exemplary of the ideal of 'dramma per musica' that lay at the very origins of opera in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[richfarmer]

One of the few atonal works that doesn't leave me flat. The music just fits the story.

[fredrickroll]

I have never agreed with you so wholeheartedly as in the case of "Wozzeck." I think the heart-breaking last interlude is what saves this opera for the audience at large. I would suggest that, consciously or subconsciously, Berg intended it as an extremely bitter satire on Siegfried's Funeral March. In the honor of his anti-hero Wozzeck, Berg marches up all the main motives from the opera, much as Wagner, in the honor of his "hero" Siegfried, summons up the main motives of the entire "Ring." Siegfried does not evoke a fraction of the sympathy that we feel for Wozzeck. Siegmund invokes more compassion, but the aspect of the close of "Die Götterdämmerung" that actually moves us to tears is the reminiscence of the motive of Sieglinde's love - Sieglinde, the only figure in the entire "Ring" who actually awakens our compassion.

[r.handerlie]

There was a topic on Reddit not too long ago about favorite 20th century opera and Wozzeck was the pick by a big landslide.

[MarauderOSU]

I haven't heard Wozzeck yet, because I don't feel ready for it. I have heard and love the Violin Concerto, though.

[thomasvendetti]

What a wonderful explanation for your choice. An old friend, now long gone, described the music of Berg as 12 tone music with a human face. Wozzeck is unbearably meaningful. Its impact is not foreign to anyone who is aware of the suffering endured by so many in this sad world.

[EASYTIGER]

For me - in a way - Wozzeck carries on where Strauss left off after Salome and Elektra. Strauss "stepped back from the brink" with Rosenkavalier and never fully retuned to the world of his earlier operas. He handed the baton he'd created to Berg. To me there are clear stylistic similarities. And BTW, I love both Strauss and Berg!

[BryanHalo]

I'll give Wozzeck another chance. I've not been able to finish more than half of this opera, so far. Berg's violin concerto hits me emotionally every time I hear it. It's hard to top even an average performance of the violin concerto.

[rhonda]

I tried to listen to Wozzeck but I just could not get through it. I found a great 9 hour recording called the Alban Berg Collection and I listened to a lot of the compositions but Mr. Berg just does not do it for me. If I had to pick something to save it would be the Three Pieces for Orchestra. I listened to the version on the collection by the Weiner Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado. I also enjoyed the 4 pieces for clarinet and piano.

[HassoBenSoba]

A masterpiece that just keeps getting better. Abbado conducted a staged performance with the Chicago Symphony (spring, 1984) that, for some arcane, complex reason (union-related, I recall) was not able to be recorded, and thus is lost to time. The minimal staging was perhaps the IDEAL way to experience Wozzeck, not to mention Benjamin Luxon, Hildegard Behrens, the great Gerhard Unger (Captain) and Alexander Malta (Doctor). Stunning beyond belief....but sadly, preserved only as a memory. LR

[thomasdeansfineart]

Thank you for your eloquent comments. So beautifully put. 🙏🙏🙌

[austinhan]

Even though 12-tone was hard for me to get into, Berg would occasionally tap into familiar tropes that gently nudged me into understanding the music, whether it was an aria that resembled a lullaby, an out-of-tune bar piano, or even the mention of a windmill that includes the sound of a millstone played on a bass drum.

[chriskim]

I agree with Berg's Wozzeck as being the choice for him. It took me a while to get into it.
On the other end, I'd love to see an entry for Rossini. The overtures leave out his splendid areas of his operas. I love the comic genius of his Barber of Seville, but he has other masterpieces as Guillaume Tell, La Cenerentola. You could pick Abbado's fantastic 4 opera collection as "a recording" (you have praised this in the past). His Messa di Gloria is a liturgical "opera" that is underrated.

[jlaurson]

My instinctive answer would have been: Opus 1. But Wozzeck is, of course, the correct answer.

[falesch]

Oh, good choice. I reach for Lulu more often but Wozzeck best fits the notion of "most characteristic" Berg, imo. I thought your presentation was superb, David. You've covered the 1st Viennese school, now it's time for Webern to complete your traversal of the 2nd Viennese School! All I can say about Webern is: At the moment I don't know which I'd choose, but it'd be from among the later works. I've never done this, but a mood has come over me to make a suggestion: Entsagung by Karlheinz Essl!