Berg Sonata

[thalberg]

Here's a recording I made of the Berg Sonata Op. 1.  The recording is two and a half years old.

This piece is wonderful.  I want to re-learn it.

[prongated]

...nice! Having heard only two different preformances of this and never studied the score properly, I can't say much else...but I like the atmosphere you created here. It's expressive and lyrical too!

This is a great effort on one of the best op. 1 ever written - at least to my ears. What do you do these days thalberg? Still studying? Or concertising

[thalberg]

...nice! Having heard only two different preformances of this and never studied the score properly, I can't say much else...but I like the atmosphere you created here. It's expressive and lyrical too!

This is a great effort on one of the best op. 1 ever written - at least to my ears. What do you do these days thalberg? Still studying? Or concertising

Thanks!    These days....well.....I finished my DMA two years ago, then I got a job that stressed the heck out of me (it was mostly accompanying and my reading was not good enough to keep up with the volume).  Finishing the DMA and having a stressful job kind of burned me out.  So I took this last year off, and now I'm thinking of perhaps a career in computer programming.  But of course I still teach lessons and play now and then. 

Also if you like the Berg Sonata, I wrote a big 185-page paper on it, so if you want to know anything about it, I'm the one to ask!

[ramseytheii]

Thanks!    These days....well.....I finished my DMA two years ago, then I got a job that stressed the heck out of me (it was mostly accompanying and my reading was not good enough to keep up with the volume).  Finishing the DMA and having a stressful job kind of burned me out.  So I took this last year off, and now I'm thinking of perhaps a career in computer programming.  But of course I still teach lessons and play now and then. 

Also if you like the Berg Sonata, I wrote a big 185-page paper on it, so if you want to know anything about it, I'm the one to ask!

I'd be interested to read your paper.  Are you willing to just give it out?

Walter Ramsey

[thalberg]

I'd be interested to read your paper.  Are you willing to just give it out?

Walter Ramsey

If you want to see it, I'm sure we can work something out.  After all the hard work I put into it, I certainly want it to be read!   Also, I'm getting it ready for publication.

[rachfan]

Hi thalberg,

Congratulations on your fine performance of this sonata.  I think you did a wonderful job, and the recording is very high quality as well.

I'm crazy about some of Berg's expressionistic works, particularly his Seven Early Songs for voice and orchestra, which I could listen to all day and night.  Yet for some reason--despite several listenings--I've never really warmed up to his Sonata for piano.  The songs I mentioned seem more tonally based and have Berg's seductive harmonic idiom written all over them, and there are moments where he out-hyper-romanticizes the Neo-Romantics!  But the Sonata seems somehow more polytonal, remote, and restless in its mood and still manages to elude me.  Perhaps it's an acquired taste.  I do realize that it was his Op. 1, and perhaps he was still experimenting in finding his own unique composing "voice".   

Again, your performance is very impressive.  Thanks for posting it!

[m1469]

Wow, thalberg.  What a great recording and such an interesting work.  I have never heard this before, but I find it quite fascinating and think it's an interesting display of your pianism and musicianship.  This is a very thoughtful performance by you and I appreciate it very much.

Overall, I really appreciate your ability to completely carry through, down to the very last note, on your interpretational ideas; they are very lucid and clear -- you never seem to disengage from where you are going nor from where you are, consequently, taking the listener -- which makes it a very enjoyable experience for somebody like me  .

Thanks for posting this !  I have spent some time downloading everything else I can find of your's 

[thalberg]

Thanks m1469!  Those are some kind words  .  Very encouraging!  And I'm glad you liked the piece--after studying it for years, personally I think it is an absolute masterpiece.  I have so much respect for Berg now that I studied what Schoenberg taught him, and what the artistic trends were at the time.  He mastered the most cutting edge harmonic language of his day, and captured the emotional climate of his time with seismographic precision.

I read about how around the time he wrote this piece (1908) there was a dramatic rise in suicides, admittance to mental institutions, nervous exhaustion, and crime.  It was a very difficult time directly preceding World War 1.  Expressionism emerged then with 4 characteristics:  seeing life as a struggle between the positive and negative, dwelling on the negative, profoundly turning inward, and then suicide.  I really think all four of these traits come through in the Berg Sonata.

The best I ever played the piece was when I felt like my life was falling apart.   (This happened about 8 months after this recording.  Didn't record that performance--wish I had!)

[furtwaengler]

It's been a while since I've listened to this sonata, and what a pleasure it is to revisit the piece in such a performance as you've posted here. Hearing the first line is like visiting an old room...and really I don't know how to finish that thought..it's a nostalgia, maybe, but I don't want to call it that. I love very much this composer and to tell you the truth, I'd forgotten how much I loved the lonely-inward world of this sonata. There's really nothing nothing like it.

I could only wish you'd restrained the pedal a bit on the runs so there could be a clearer texture and a preserved line. It's just a bit muddy in those spots, though I think I understand your decision. Overall I love the world you create, and your understanding of the piece shows. While the structural understanding is apparent and logical, you've a very improvisational way which I've not often encountered...as if it's all sprung out of nothing, capturing an original thought on the mind of the composer, or the state of his mind in that moment, rather than his working out of the material to achieve the final composition (I've been up all night and am not exactly sure how to write that, but it is a compliment!) It all works well with what you say in the post above this one (which could apply especially to many other of his works...you are familiar with Wozzeck and Lulu?)

Thanks very much for this!

[rachfan]

Hi thalberg,

Thanks for including all the background information on the sonata.  Now I have a much better understanding and appreciation for the mood of restlessness in the piece.  I have to say that I've gotten more out of your performance of this sonata than any others I've encountered previously.  You "put a piece over to your audience" very effectively.

[fnork]

Thalberg,

I just listened to your recording, thanks for sharing it! You also followed the complex score very well and it's very interresting to see how different the result can be despite this, comparing our recordings. The main difference is the tempo - I chose a much faster tempo (I was sort of experimenting with the tempo prior to the concert - a few days earlier I did play it slower but felt that I prefered a faster pace), but there's something I like about the slow tempo. it becomes more "meditative" perhaps.

anyway, I have to run now, but thanks again for sharing your recording! I have to give it a 'proper' listen later - I'm sitting in an internetcafe now

[etudes]

very nice....I rarely give comments on Audition but I have to leave one here for your brilliant rendition of my non favorite piece! (started to like it after your recording and looking forward to read your book!)

[thalberg]

Wow, etudes, thanks!  That means a lot coming from you 

[tanman]

 
after not hearing this in a long time.   

[thalberg]

Tanman, you made my day 

[imbetter]

was your paper published yet

[michel dvorsky]

I listened to this again for the first time in like a year.  As meaningful a listening experience as the first time I heard it.  Really good interpretation.

[thalberg]

Thanks, Michael!

was your paper published yet

No, Cambridge has not given me much of a response.  Last I heard they said they liked it but it wasn't ready yet.  It's been a year, so I'm thinking it may not work out with them.  I might try another publisher. 

[imbetter]

OK well good luck keep us posting on when it's published because I'd like to read it

[rhapsody4]

Quality performance - really enjoyed it having never heard the piece before. Certainly an interesting piece that will require several more listens to full appreciate. Best of luck also with the publishing. Quite a diverse career move: study in this to computer programming!

[thalberg]

Quality performance - really enjoyed it having never heard the piece before. Certainly an interesting piece that will require several more listens to full appreciate. Best of luck also with the publishing. Quite a diverse career move: study in this to computer programming!

Glad you liked it   

[communist]

,

[crazy for ivan moravec]

thal, are you Philip Low? the file has that name.

[kard]

I was about to remarked about how amazed I was...then I realized I already downloaded your performance last year 
Good stuff. thanks for sharing.