Kurt Weill / Alban Berg: Concertos – Eivind Aadland

New objectivity and serialism

Almost exactly contemporary, these two works occupy a similar place in the output of their respective composers: they are examples of absolute music from two men who were to become strongly associated with stage works and who were about to become international figures, leading representatives of their different musical “schools”.

On this album Eivind Aadland (violin), Einar Henning Smebye (piano) and the Norwegian Wind Ensemble with conductor Ole Kristian Ruud, performs two concertos by the extraordinary composers Kurt Weill and Alban Berg. The former is represented by the work “Concerto for Violin, Wind Instruments and Percussion”, a piece reflecting the contemporary spirit of “new objectivity”, worlds apart from the overwrought emotions of a previous generation of composers. On the other half of the album is Berg´s “Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 13 Wind Instruments”, characterised by the composer´s familiar free tonality. Both are dealing with the fall-out from the explosion into total chromaticism that had previously taken place, but in different ways: one into serialism and another into neo-classicism.