It's not that bad, really. A little Berg with a dash of Webern never hurt anybody. It's a fact that Berg's Early Songs (7) for soprano and piano are lush and plush and voluptuously over-stuffed in a delightfully fin de siècle way. It's a fact that Webern's Quintet for violin, clarinet, tenor sax, and piano is lean and hard and deliriously funky in a severely dodecaphonic way. In the right performances, a little Berg with a dash of Webern is bracing. It can even exciting.These performances by Chicago musicians are just ...
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It's not that bad, really. A little Berg with a dash of Webern never hurt anybody. It's a fact that Berg's Early Songs (7) for soprano and piano are lush and plush and voluptuously over-stuffed in a delightfully fin de siècle way. It's a fact that Webern's Quintet for violin, clarinet, tenor sax, and piano is lean and hard and deliriously funky in a severely dodecaphonic way. In the right performances, a little Berg with a dash of Webern is bracing. It can even exciting.These performances by Chicago musicians are just about but not quite the right performances. The playing is masterful. The ensemble is ideal. The intonation is dead on. And the performance is no doubt dedicated: the musicians are clearly doing their considerable best, but they're just about but not quite convincing. These are admirable performances, but they are of the notes of the pieces and not get inside the expressivity of music. Because whether fin de siècle or dodecaphonic, the essence of the music of Berg and Webern...
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