1. Langsam
2. Mäßige Viertel

It may not be initially obvious from listening to Berg’s String Quartet but, as the concert series’ title ‘Brahms and Beyond’ implies, Brahms was a big influence on the Austrian composer, especially in his younger years. Hearing today’s two quartets back-to-back helps highlight Brahms’ guiding hand: both works are dense and highly expressive, and use themes and motifs, in Berg’s case, based on the dramatic opening notes on the violin.

But we are certainly in the ‘beyond Brahms’ territory. There are obvious differences: unusually the Quartet is in just two movements, rather than four, and even more surprising is its lack of key signature. Despite this, it is still considered to be tonal as opposed to the atonal qualities of his teacher Schoenberg’s music of the time. The Quartet is a heady mix of the emotional impact of a Romantic Brahms and experimentation. The recipe worked: Berg’s Quartet was (eventually) positively received, and became Berg’s first big success as well as the foundation stone of the Second Viennese School of which Berg was the shining light.  

^{Note by Sarah Breeden}

Alban Berg
^1885–1935

Although piano lessons formed part of Berg’s general education, the boy showed few signs of exceptional talent for music. He struggled to pass his final exams at the Vienna Gymnasium, preferring to learn directly of new trends in art, literature, music and architecture from friends such as Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Klimt and Adolf Loos.

On graduating from school, Berg accepted a post as a local government official, but in October 1904 was inspired by a newspaper advertisement to study composition with Arnold Schoenberg. He studied for six years with Schoenberg, who remained his close friend and mentor. During this time Schoenberg evolved a new approach to composing, gradually moving away from the norms of tonal harmony.

In 1910 Berg completed his String Quartet, in which he revealed an independent creative flair. Berg’s self-confidence grew with the composition of several miniature works and, in 1914, the large-scale Three Pieces for Orchestra. Service with the Austrian Imperial Army during World War One did not completely halt Berg’s output; indeed, he began his first opera, Wozzeck, in the summer of 1917. The work was premiered at the Berlin Staatsoper in December 1925 and, despite hostile early criticism, has since entered the international repertoire. As an innovative composer, Berg successfully married atonality – and, later, a harmonic and melodic language based on the use of all 12 tones of the chromatic scale – with forms from the past. Traces of popular music also surface in his works, notably so in his opera Lulu (1929–35), a powerful tale of immorality, completed from the composer’s sketches only after the death of his widow in 1976. Berg himself died of septicaemia, almost certainly caused by complications following an insect bite.

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1. Allegro non troppo
2. Andante moderato
3. Quasi Minuetto, moderato
4. Finale: Allegro non assai

Sometimes we stall at starting something if we think it’s already been done and can’t be bettered. Why bother writing a novel when it’s been done brilliantly so many times already? This seems to have Brahms’ trouble with string quartets. Feeling the behemoth Beethoven breathing down his neck, not to mention quartet stalwarts Mozart and Schubert, had tightened the reins on creative flow, and it took him 20 years and various re-writes before Brahms would let his first two string quartets out in public. Puzzling behaviour for such a glittering composer of chamber music: in fact, he had written a number of quartets but the manuscripts’ perfunctory fate was to end up as Brahms’ wallpaper. But he needn’t have worried: the quartets went on to inspire many, including Berg and his teacher Schoenberg.

Rich and sonorous, the first movement of the Second Quartet uses themes and motifs throughout its four movements, based on the notes F–A–E and F–A–F, a consciously warm offering to his great friend Joseph Joachim whose motto was ‘Frei, aber einsam’ (Free, but lonely). Brahms replied with ‘Frei, aber froh’ (Free, but glad). Berg’s teacher Schoenberg particularly loved the intricate magical second movement. The third movement takes the form of a rather forlorn minuet, while the fourth embraces wild Magyar folk music of Hungary.

^{Note written by Sarah Breeden}

Johannes Brahms
^1833–97

Showing early musical promise, the young Johannes Brahms supplemented his parents’ meagre income by playing in the bars and brothels of Hamburg’s infamous red-light district. In 1853 he presented himself to Robert Schumann in Düsseldorf, winning unqualified approval from the older composer. Brahms fell in love with Schumann’s wife, Clara, supporting her after her husband’s illness and death. The relationship did not develop as Brahms wished, and he returned to Hamburg; their close friendship, however, survived.

In 1862 Brahms moved to Vienna where he found fame as a conductor, pianist and composer. The Leipzig premiere of his German Requiem in 1869 proved a triumph, with subsequent performances establishing Brahms as one of the emerging German nation’s foremost composers. Following the long-delayed completion of his First Symphony in 1876, he composed in quick succession the majestic Violin Concerto, the two piano Rhapsodies, the First Violin Sonata in G major and the Second Symphony. His subsequent association with the much-admired court orchestra in Meinigen allowed him freedom to experiment and de­­v­el­op new ideas, the relationship crowned by the Fourth Symphony of 1884.

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