Seda Röder

Program

Richard Heuberger (1850–1914): Mazurka – im Carneval
Robert Fuchs (1847–1927): Piano Sonata, op. 88
Egon Wellesz (1885–1974): Three Piano Pieces, op. 9
Conrad Ansorge (1862–1930): Piano Sonata, op. 23
Alban Berg (1885–1935): Piano Sonata, op. 1

About the Concert

What was the music like, that Alban Berg heard in his formative years as a young student in Vienna? By which music was he influenced when he composed his epoch-making first and only piano sonata? In an attempt to reconstruct a small fraction of the musical world that permeated turn-of-the-century Viennese culture, Ms. Röder has unearthed four long-forgotten works by influential contemporaries of Berg, which she will juxtapose in this 80-minute lunch concert with the composer’s Piano Sonata. All of these rarely performed works were composed and published in the years before World War I, at the same time as Berg worked on his Piano Sonata and Schoenberg published his Three Piano Pieces op. 11. The program includes a diverse range of works: a popular carnival dance by Richard Heuberger (1850–1914), a melancholic sonata by Robert Fuchs (1847–1927) that is greatly influenced by the music of his friend and mentor Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), as well as more progressive works by the scholar and composer Egon Wellesz (1885–1974) and the virtuoso pianist and composer Conrad Ansorge (1862–1930).

About the composers

Richard Heuberger (1850–1914) was without question one of the most influential musical figures in Vienna at the time. Having arrived at composition only after a detour via engineering, the ambitious musician from Graz quickly found a way into the Viennese music scene. Starting in 1876, Heuberger directed the Academic Choral Society and only two years later—aged twenty-eight—he was appointed conductor of the Sing-Academy. Shortly thereafter, Heuberger catapulted into a steep career as a music critic, first writing for various smaller newspapers and journals before succeeding Eduard Hanslick as the chief critic of the Neue Freie Presse in 1896. In his composing career, which gained momentum in those years, Heuberger focused mainly on choral and orchestral works. To this day his Opernball (1898) remains amongst the standard repertory of the Viennese operettas. From 1902 onwards he exerted great influence as a composition teacher at the Vienna Conservatory.

Robert Fuchs (1847–1927): „Fuchs is a splendid musician, everything is so fine and so skillful, so charmingly invented, that one is always pleased,” wrote no one other but the great master of Romantic music Johannes Brahms. Even though a close friend of Brahms and highly esteemed by many contemporaries, Fuchs’ international composition career never really took off. As a teacher however, he must be regarded amongst the most influential of the entire nineteenth-century. Amongst his many students were Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf, Alexander Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Richard Strauss, as well as Jean Sibelius.

Egon Wellesz (1885–1974) was equally renowned as a composer and musicologist. Having won numerous prizes and accolades—he became Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1957 and won the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 1961—Wellesz was one of the first students of Arnold Schoenberg. His works were performed by the most renowned orchestras and performers of his time, amongst them the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera. When Nazi Germany occupied Austria, Wellesz escaped to England where he was appointed lecturer at Oxford University in 1938.

Even though Conrad Ansorge (1862–1930) was not a Viennese composer, his music was omnipresent in the Habsburg capital. As a student of Franz Liszt and teacher of Wilhelm Furtwängler, Ansorge was equally well-known as a pianist and composer in Austria. His reputation was such that in 1903 a musical society for the advancement of musical art was founded in his honor. It was in this Ansorge Society, which by that time had been renamed to Verein für Kunst und Kultur, that Berg’s Piano Sonata was premiered.

Details

Where: Sheraton City Center Hotel
Philadelphia, PA
For a map click here
When: November 14, 2009 @ 12:15-1:45pm