Out of Vienna
Alban Berg (1885-1935)
Lyric Suite (1926)
Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942)
Five Pieces for string quartet, WV 68 (1923-1924)
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Five Movements for string quartet, op.5 (1909)
Langsamer Satz (1905)
Leonkoro Quartet
rec. 2025, Reitstadel, Neumarkt, Germany
Alpha Classics 1196 [63]
Ever since studying Alban Berg’s divine Violin Concerto at school, I have been an admirer of his music – except the two operas, Wozzeck and Lulu. I have never quite managed to get my head around them. Berg is often cited as the “acceptable face” of serialism, usually building bridges back to tonality, emotional narrative and recognisable forms.
Berg completed the six-movement Lyric Suite in early October 1926. It is a definitive example of his ability to blend late Romanticism with his personal adaptation of Schoenberg’s serialism. But it is not just a wonderful blend of tonal and atonal material; it also encodes a secret autobiographical programme, first fully revealed by George Perle, American composer and music theorist. The work is understood to incorporate allusions to Berg’s affair with Hanna Fuchs. He used numerology, ciphered initials A-B-H-F and many hidden musical quotations. Unsurprisingly, the progress of this quartet covers a wide range: often anguished, sometimes ecstatic, it clearly mirrors this clandestine relationship. Before Perle’s scholarship, a listener would hear the Suite as abstract modernist chamber music, with wildly varying emotions, but always bound by a strong structural logic. Understanding the Berg/Fuchs relationship simply adds a human touch: a series of “Intimate Letters” to his lover.
Erwin Schulhoff was a Czech composer and pianist who fused jazz, Dada, modernism and late-Romanticism in his opus. He pioneered the treatment of jazz as a serious art form in Europe. As a Jew, he was banned by the Nazi regime as musically degenerate. Tragically, his life and prolific career were cut short in 1942: he died of tuberculosis at the Wülzburg concentration camp.
The Five Pieces for string quartet are full of parody and satire. Essentially a dance suite, it nods back to the Baroque model, with lots of subversive twists. In fact, it is really a pastiche of then-contemporary popular music: the opening Alla Valse viennese in a paradoxical 4/4; a “wonky” Serenata with all strings muted; a wild Alla czeca polka with eccentric rhythmic accents; and the most sensual moment, the “sexy, slinky” Alla Tango milonga. The suite ends with a furious Alla Tarantella. Schulhoff dedicated the work to his colleague Darius Milhaud. It was premiered at the Salzburg International Society for Contemporary Music on 8 August 1924.
Anton Webern is not everyone’s cup of tea. His music is compressed, pointillistic and often emotionally severe. Listeners may find its brevity, silence and atonality challenging rather than immediately inviting. I have been listening to his music on and off for more than half a century, and I am still not sure that I “get it”. This new disc, however, presents a wonderful piece that could be labelled entry-level Webern. Langsamer Satz (slow movement) emerges from 1905, long before Webern began adopting Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method. It unfolds as a love song written for Wilhelmine Mörtl, his cousin and later his wife. Stylistically, it owes much more to Brahms, Mahler and Zemlinsky than to any atonalist. It is conceived in modified sonata form with three themes; there is warmth in the harmonies, expansive melodies and expressive climaxes. Very different from his “mature” compositions, it is a heartbreakingly beautiful work.
One breathes a different air in Webern’s freely atonal Five Movements for string quartet. By now, he was nearing the end of his apprenticeship with Schoenberg. He said that the inspiration was the death of his mother in 1906. Here there are no Romantic gestures: these miniatures are compressed to the barest of essentials. It is a fragile sound of isolated notes, half-heard whispers and sudden explosions of colour. Webern uses a variety of techniques to create his sound world: harmonics, mutes, novel or rarely used instrumental techniques, and silence. The concept of “Perpetual Variation” is inherent, avoiding any sense of repetition or recapitulation in a traditional sense. Overall, this is an exercise in gnomic intensity, where every single note carries the weight of an entire movement. Heard without the preconceptions of tradition, this is a wonderfully nuanced piece of German Expressionism.
Founded in Berlin in 2019, the Leonkoro Quartet achieved a near-unprecedented sweep of the competition circuit in 2022. They won first prize and nine special awards at the Wigmore Hall Competition, followed immediately by top honours at Bordeaux. Mentored by Alfred Brendel and the Artemis Quartet, they have since collected the 2024 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and 2026 Gramophone Editor’s Choice for February.
Nicolas Derny’s liner notes in English, French, and German give a good introduction to all four quartet. The recording is outstanding.
This release brings clarity, character and emotional integrity to three strikingly different modernist voices, and offers a satisfying introduction to four remarkable works.
John France
Other review: Leslie Wright
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