Luogo e data di registrazione		Lukaskirche, Dresden (Germania) - settembre/ottobre 1996
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive producer		Renate Kupfer
	Recording producers		Wolfgang Stengel
	Recording engineers		Christian Feldgen
	Assistant engineers		Peter Weinsheimer, Tobias Lehmann
	Digital editing		Andreas Florcyak
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Teldec | 3984-22902-2 | LC 6019 | 1 CD - 64' 13" | (p) 1999 | DDD
	Note		-

Anton Webern and Viennese Espressivo Webern's music is a continuation of the 19th-century musical tradition inasmuch as it is imbued with a radical desire to be expressive, something which the Viennese Classical period and late Romantic composers such as Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg had sought in an ideal of compositional style and performance best summed up by the term "Viennese espressivo". A modern in-depth analysis of the past no longer perceives Webern to be a central figure of the 20th century. Rather, he is now seen as the composer who took the tradition of the "Viennese Classical period" as far as it could go. This is reflected not only in his music’s obvious striving for expressivity but also in its use of the “fragmentation technique” principle, whereby a thematic line is distributed among several instruments. Thus the most pressing problem that has to be solved by performers of Webern’s works is the question of how to render and indeed make audible melodic lines which are considerably extended and often interrupted by rests. In contrast to serial music, the individual notes should not be heard as pointillist dots. Rather, they should use their impulsive energy to reach beyond themselves, to touch the next note played by another instrument, and then to blend into it. Anton Webern left a precisely defined total of exactly 31 works, the first and last of which are linked by the principle of developing variation. He deliberately assigned his first opus number to the Passacaglia op. l, which he wrote in 1908, for this was the gateway which was to lead to the rest of his life’s work. It was a demonstrative sign that he had attained independence, for he only began to number his works after he had officially completed his composition studies with his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. The symphonic poem IM SOMMERWIND of 1904, which was based on the poem of the same name in Bruno Wille's novel Offenbarungebn des Wacholderbaums (Revelations of the Juniper Tree), has the subtitle, “Idyll for Large Orchestra”. It still bears traces of Webern’s interest in the genre of the symphonic poem, and the poetic symphonic style which he had encountered in the music of Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Gustav Mahler. It is easy to understand why the composer did not subsequently include this piece in his list of works. Yet it already possesses certain features which were destined to become characteristic of his later pieces, for example, the importance of tone colour as an aspect of composition, as something which does not merely illustrate the musical events, but is capable of generating expressivity of its own accord. For this reason the piece is far more modern than Strauss. It has links with the orchestration of Webern’s later works and the vibrant textures of Claude Debussy. The PASSACAGLIA OP. 1 (1908) contains as if in a nutshell all the motivic shapes which were to follow it. It is based on the familiar kind of thematic passacaglia bass found in Beethoven’s Eroica Variations op. 35 and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. However, a kind of invention peculiar to Webern becomes apparent in the rests inserted in the attenuated passacaglia theme. The muted pizzicato of the strings produces sounds which are meant to be connected, despite the intervening rests. At the same time, the rests, construed in terms of what the 19th century called “eloquent rests”, are as important and meaningful as the notes themselves. This foreshadows one of Webern's central preoccupations, which was to base a composition on attenuation, empty spaces, and silence. The fact that deliberate emptiness is more powerful than loud activity is seen again and again, especially in the free sections of the ensuing cycle of 23 variations, which are full of dramatic commotion and massed chords. However, op. 1 was still a continuously linear structure, which, despite its numerous episodes, strove towards a symphonic climax in a rather dramatic manner. On the other hand, at first sight the SIX ORCHESTRAL PIECES OP. 6 [Revised version, 1928] seem to be character pieces which combine long chunks taken out of larger contexts. And the FIVE ORCHESTRAL PIECES OP. 10 (1911-13) seem to be compressed even more, and are tantamount to a greatly abbreviated version of the op. 6 Orchestral Pieces. That is the reason why, together with the Bagatellen for String Quartet op. 9, they have been described as aphorisms - rightly so, perhaps, in view of the fact that they are abbreviations of formerly extended forms. There are funeral marches and imaginary nocturnes which are reminiscent of Mahler’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. But, when compared with the very brief and extremely compressed pieces, they are either so long that, like the concluding pieces of opp. 6 and 10, they seem to be never-ending, or they are so short that the listener, if he is to follow them at all, believes he has to look at them with a telescope in order to magnify them sufficiently to make them consciously comprehensible and audible. During his lengthy middle period, between the op. 11 cello pieces (1914) and the op. 20 String Trio (1926-27), Webern wrote only vocal pieces, working towards a new style by grappling with the metaphorical use of colour in the poetry of Georg Trakl. ln this connection, his path to "composition with twelve notes related solely to each other" is not as important as the new manner of writing as it were weightless vocal and instrumental parts which are all finely balanced. In the orchestral works after op. 21 this leads to a situation where the voices are all equal. Since each one is equally close to the thematic process of the basic motivic shapes, none of them can be understood in figurative or ornamental terms. Although the SYMPHONY OP. 21 (1927-28) with its two movements is reminiscent of more traditional two-movement and cyclical works of the symphonic and instrumental repertoire (such as Beethoven’s opp. 90 and 111 Piano Sonatas, and Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony), Webern is nonetheless pursuing a different path, and initially this is to “return” to the kind of binary sonata form on which the first movement of the symphony is based. Construing sonata form as ternary began with theorists who took their bearings from Beethoven’s symphonies. However, around 1780, the “development section and recapitulation” continued to be thought of as a single second section which followed on the first, the “exposition”, Webern emphasized his historical model by repeating both the first and second sections, thereby underlining the reference to binary sonata form. The second movement is based on another architectural and formal principle which is quite different to the linear and dynamic formal processes of Beethoven’s symphonies. The twelve-note row is arranged symmetrically around the centre of a tritone, and makes use of mirror techniques, which can also be heard when the basic shapes are linked (for example, in the first variation, bar 17 onwards, the retrograde in violin 1). Webern also transfers these structural thematic relationships to the formal architecture. The theme with seven variations and a coda becomes denser and denser on the basis of a symmetry which proceeds from without to within up to the “middle” of the fourth variation. Thus the framing variations I:VII - II:VI - III:V correspond to each other in a variety of ways, whereas the fourth is the ambivalent centre between the theme of the variations and the coda. Thus we are dealing with a cross between the classical and organic formal schema of the late-18th century and the architectural and symmetrical schema of the kind employed by ]. S. Bach in the Goldberg Variations and in the Actus tragicus cantata. Bach’s kind of formal architecture is also of importance in the CONCERTO FOR NINE INSTRUMENTS OP. 24 (1931-34), Thus, on 19 September 1928, whilst engaged in making the first draft, Webern wrote to his publisher Emil Hertzka: “In the meantime I have already turned my attention to a new work, a Concerto for violin, clarinet, horn, piano and string orchestra. (In the style of some of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.)” The influence of J. S. Bach, over and above the reference to him in the letter, was of very great importance. In fact, when Webern was notating the final version of op. 24 in 1934, he was engaged in orchestrating the six-part Ricercar from Bach’s Musical Offering. Webern's penultimate work, the VARIATIONS FOR ORCHESTRA OP. 30 (1940), completes the circle leading back to op. 1. The idea of developing a formal process out of an unbelievably complex and multidimensional thematic shape which on various levels externalizes what was implicit in the basic shape is of fundamental importance for the whole of Webern’s work. For this reason, Webern’s themes, especially in his sets of variations, are not points of departure, but goals and conclusions from which the composition is developed back to its beginning. (It is no accident, therefore, that many of his forms are retrograde, or present the basic shape of the row in the second movement, and not at the beginning.) In a letter to the Swiss critic and musicologist Willi Reich written on 3 May 1941 Webern explained: "Everything which occurs in the piece (op. 30) is based on the two ideas, which are presented in the first and second bars (double bass and oboe)! But it is reduced even further, for the second shape (oboe) is already in itself retrograde: the second two notes are the retrograde of the first two, though rhythmically augmented. It is again followed, in the trombone, by the first shape (double bass), but in diminution! And in retrograde with regard to motifs and intervals. For that is how my row is constructed, which is made up of these thrice four notes." Martin Zenck (Translation: Alfred Clayton)