The premiere of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck on December 15, 1925 opened to a huge success, the composer receiving the wild adulation of the crowd. You'd thought he'd be pleased with himself, having composed a masterpiece that would go on to be produced 150 times in 28 European cities within ten years of its premiere. But: No. In the book The Rest is Noise, you can read Theodor Adorno's recollection of the events. Instead of being elated by the ovation, Berg was upset. Adorno wrote: "I was with him until late into the night, literally consoling him over his success. That a work conceived like Wozzeck's apparitions in the field, a work satisfying Berg's own standards, could please a first-night audience, was incomprehensible to him and struck him as an argument against the opera." Schoenberg, Berg's composition teacher, was there as well, and Adorno recalls, jealous: "Schoenberg envied Berg his successes, and Berg envied Schoenberg is failures." So there. Berg was (unsuccessfully) successful, but he did not sell out. more ›

The SF Symphony journey from Schubert to Berg is coming to an end this week, with a final program combining Berg's Violin Concerto with Schubert's Mass in E flat major. We believe that the whole exercise was only a pretext to make Berg more palatable to the San Francisco audience: by insisting on the roots of his music into a Viennese romanticism, Berg is much less challenging than as a twelve tone music proponent. The connection between both was elusive, but if a little fuzzy marketing is needed to spoon feed Berg's magnificent music to the audience, so be it, and enjoy! more ›