Konzert für Violine und Orchester = Concerto for Violin and Orchestra: Dem Andenken eines Engels, and: Violinkonzert = Violin Concerto, and: Violinkonzert “Dem Andenken eines Engels.” (review)

Berg Violin Concerto

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, performers were often high-handed in their dealings with musical works . . . and the wildest emotionalism often guided their performances. . . . The beginning of this century saw a change of heart: musicians and musicologists pleaded for greater textual fidelity, for closer observation of the composer’s directions. . . . Today’s musician is unprecedentedly text-conscious and there is a greater demand for ‘original versions’ than at any previous time. . . . It is the task of the interpreter to combine close observation of the letter (assisted by an alert critical faculty) and the spirit. . . . I have recently been faced with such a dilemma when studying the violin concerto by Alban Berg for my B.B.C. performance”

(Max Rostal, in Rostal & Hans Keller, “Berg’s Violin Concerto: A Revision,” Musical Times 95, no. 1332 [February 1954]: 87).

The issues surrounding scholarship and performance are addressed admirably by violinist Max Rostal and musicologist Hans Keller in a consideration of the cadenza in Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto that contains a passage of intricate counterpoint (mvt. 2, mm. 78–90) for which Berg supplied an ossia version for the violin and a solo viola. The purpose of this alternative passage is to clarify the counterpoint, somewhat obscured in the solo violin part, regarded as an arrangement of the ossia in this interpretation. Keller writes an approving commentary and notes that Rostal’s version includes “(1) changed notes [i.e., f to f in m. 82, for an obvious misprint]; (2) changed note-values; (3) octave transposition; and (4) . . . ‘re-scoring.’ ” Feeling that “in his endeavour to make the passage playable, the composer had deviated too far from his original intention” (Rostal, p. 87), Rostal substituted his version in performance.

Keller and Rostal’s engagement with the Violin Concerto sets the stage for a consideration of these recently published urtext editions of the score and piano reduction, and a facsimile of the autograph. The facsimile edition comes from the autograph manuscript held at the Library of Congress, with comments by Douglas Jarman. The new editions of the score and piano reduction were produced by a joint venture of Henle Verlag and Breitkopf & Härtel. Previous editions of the Violin Concerto include miniature scores from Universal Edition published in 1936, then in 1964 with three pages of analytical notes by “F. S.,” then in 1996 in a revised edition with two pages of notes by Jarman, following his edition for the Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, Teil 2 (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1996). Jarman’s complete-works edition mentions a “Volume B” that was intended to contain extensive comments, but it seems this volume has not appeared. These new editions from Henle/Breitkopf are being published as the copyright expires on the...