What do you all think of the Berg Sonata?

[thalberg]

What do you all think of the Berg Sonata?  Do you like it or dislike it?  Do you see quality in it?  Do you understand it?  Would you ever want to play it?  Have you ever heard it live?

[quantum]

Heard it once, live.  A student at the university played it.  What I remember, very rhythmically complex, but I somehow like it. 

[thalberg]

I'm glad you like it.  It is complex....lots of tempo changes and accel. and rit. passages.  Detailed score--the expressive indications are as hard to memorize as the notes. 

please....more replies.

[pokeythepenguin]

The Berg Sonata Op. 1 is a very beautiful and expressionistic piece; not really at all what you would expect from him.  It is highly lyrical and is a really great listen.  It's one of my personal favorite pieces and is not only highly rewarding to play but is becoming a pretty common competition piece; i think it showed up roughly 6 million times in the Van Cliburn Competition.  It's not even particularly difficult to learn, albeit it certainly is nowhere near "easy", but it does require quite a bit of musicality.  Definitely a good listen or piece to have in your repertoire.

[Rach3]

Heard it live twice, by a very convincing concert pianist.

[thalberg]

I'm glad you like it.  I've played it before, and I've discovered that it has the potential to be really intense and capture the audience.  The thing about it that fascinates me is that it's very hard to understand--scholars have done only a superficial job analysing it--yet even so, it seems to have an emotional impact, and LOTS of pianists play it.  So many fewer pianists play other atonal things, like Schoenberg's Op. 25 suite.

[thracozaag]

  A shame the tempo mark is always mis-read.

koji (STSD)

[Jacey1973]

I love it.

I recently composed 3 pieces for piano for my degree and my composition tutor said "have you ever heard Berg sonata op. 1?" and I never had - in fact i'd never heard anything by Berg, so he said "you seem to be composing in that kind of style"...so feeling intrigued i went and had a listen and was amazed how i'd never come across it before and how similar our compositional styles were (obviously Berg was miles ahead of my own compositions in terms of structure/style (er...everything!) Plus i'm like...what, 100 years late?!)

I am considering learning it, I recently played Mozart Sonata in D (K576) and Ravel's Alborada del gracioso. I've been playing for about 14 years - do you reckon i could handle it?!

Plus any other suggestions of things i could learn (been trying to get hold of my teacher for advice all week but he seems rather busy) - i really want to return to Beethoven - but what would be a suitable/challenging sonata for me?

Any suggestions welcome...

[thalberg]

Jenni,

If you can handle the Mozart and Ravel, then the technical aspect of the Berg sonata will not be a problem for you.  I've played the Berg a lot (and Mozart 576) so I know. Technically, there are some awkward things, but nothing harder than what you've already done. 

The big, big, big pain for me and for everyone is learning the notes, then memorizing the notes, and also trying to remember all the expression markings.  This piece will tax your mind like nothing else. 

The good news: it's totally worth it.  It's a really rewarding piece.

If you play it and you really get into it, you and I can write more about it.  I just finished a 184-page dissertation on it!