Orchestre de chambre de Paris
Douglas Boyd conductor
Kolja Blacher violin
To the Memory of an Angel by Alban Berg, or the Everest of 20th century violin concertos
It is hard to imagine Haydn's fame and the enthusiasm of the London audience coming to hear the first performance of one of his symphonies. In each score, he tried out surprising new musical ideas, gradually breaking away from the Classical world and moving to new sound horizons. 140 years later, the first performance of Berg's Violin Concerto "To the Memory of an Angel" took place not in London but in Barcelona. The composer, who had died some months earlier in December 1935, wrote this most beautiful tribute to Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, on her death at the age of 19. The score constantly swings between sadness and elation, between the past in pre-1914 Vienna and the aesthetic changes born in the post-war period.