There are times when I suspect Alban Berg felt he zigged when he should have zagged.
Berg, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, was always the Romantic among serialists – one critic described him as “the Puccini of twelve-tone music” – so it’s not difficult to divine a shimmering, unresolved longing common to the works of his Viennese contemporaries.
On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Berg’s two-movement String Quartet of 1910. Like much of Berg’s music, the quartet is not really a strict adherent to any system. The music wafts spectrally, sharing tonal and atonal characteristics, a kind of fever dream of uncertainty.
There will be no lack of commitment in the performance, which dates from 1984. We’ll experience Marlboro excellence in the form of Ida Levin and Felix Galimir, violins; Benjamin Simon, viola; and Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cello.
Then we’ll emerge from the fin de siècle fog to find enlightenment with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart’s String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593, composed in 1790, adds a second viola to the mix. The work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Constanze, to have been written for a musical amateur, often speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him.
When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part. The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous.
We’ll hear a Marlboro performance from 2005, with Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, violas; and David Soyer, cello.
The music may be jagged, but the path to enjoyment is always straight. It’s another hour of superb chamber music making from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page