Alban Berg: Orchestral Works (2xSACD)

Alban Berg: Orchestral Works is a double SACD released by Chandos Records in 2009. With more than two and a half hours of music, it features the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Mario Venzago in a survey spanning the Austrian modernist’s entire composing career.

The programme opens with Theo Verbey’s orchestration of Berg’s early Piano Sonata, Op. 1 and culminates in the composer’s final work, the Violin Concerto, with Isabelle van Keulen as soloist. The set also includes orchestral suites from the operas Wozzeck and Lulu, the rarely recorded unfinished Passacaglia, and Berg’s arrangement of Johann Strauss II’s waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang! Unusually, the concert aria Der Wein is presented in two versions: one sung in French by tenor Robert Murray and the other in German by soprano Geraldine McGreevy.

FORMAT: 2xSACD