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 Project

This concert program brings together four long-forgotten works by influential contemporaries of the Second Viennese School. All of these works were published during the time in which the young Alban Berg composed an epoch-making masterwork: his first and only Piano Sonata. The Turkish pianist Seda Röder reunites these artful compositions in this program so that audiences today will experience some of the vibrant energy that fueled the musical culture of fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Background Information

Two significant compositional trends and their continuous conflict mark the turn of the century in Vienna. On the one hand a group of composers around Schoenberg builds upon and expands the musical language of the so called “New German School.” On the other hand some composers form a counterpart to these developments by following in the footsteps of Johannes Brahms and the “Old German School” that was associated with him.

While the continuation of the “New German School” paved the way for the so called “Second Viennese School” and made its way into the canon of music history, the repertories that glorified Brahmsian romanticism have not been paid much attention by the public.

This concert program revives four pieces from these unexplored repertories and juxtaposes them with Berg’s Piano Sonata op. 1. Each of these pieces was composed and published in the years between 1908 and 1911, when Berg composed his sonata (and Schoenberg published his Three Piano Pieces op. 11).

While the pieces by Richard Heuberger and Robert Fuchs demonstrate how composers who made up the Brahmsian front were situating themselves within a conservative musical tradition, the sonatas by Conrad Ansorge, Egon Wellesz, and Alban Berg exhibit models of connecting these Brahmsian modes of composing with the newer understanding of expanded tonality. This approach of fusing old and new had a remarkable influence on the development of Berg’s compositional style throughout his career and shaped our view of him as the most “conservative” composer of the “Second Viennese School.”

By exploring these forgotten repertories Seda Röder offers a more comprehensive picture of early 20th-century music in Vienna—a picture that hopefully contributes to a better understanding of the compositional development of the young Alban Berg.

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.