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Alban Berg / VI. Modernism

Lyric Suite

1925–⁠26 · String quartet

Six movements. The fast tempos get faster across the set and the slow ones get broader. Berg’s copy for Hanna Fuchs-⁠Robettin reveals their initials and the Baudelaire poem hidden in the finale.

4 min

Recording

III. Allegro misterioso — Trio estaticoGalimir String Quartet of Vienna · c. 1935–⁠36
3:42
The third movement of Berg’s Lyric Suite has a Trio estatico between two statements of the Allegro misterioso. The Galimir Quartet of Vienna played it on a set issued in the United States as Brunswick-⁠Polydor BP No. 2 by March 1937.
Listening notes
1. Allegro misterioso and the A–B–H–F motif
  The movement opens with the Allegro misterioso. Berg uses the signature motif A–B♭–B♮–F, in German notation A–B–H–F, the initials of Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs-⁠Robettin. The motif is most prominent in this movement.
2. Two dedications
  The published score is dedicated to Alexander Zemlinsky. Berg also dedicated the suite secretly to Hanna Fuchs-⁠Robettin, Franz Werfel’s sister, with whom he had a love affair in the 1920s. Research by George Perle and Douglass Green uncovered it in the 1970s.
3. Trio estatico
  The Trio estatico, the ecstatic middle section, begins. Unlike the outer sections, it is through-composed.
4. Return, played backwards
  The Allegro misterioso returns. In the outer sections Berg presents the same music forwards and then backwards, so the reprise runs the opening material in reverse.
5. The Galimir Quartet
  The Galimir Quartet of Vienna consisted of a brother and three sisters. Louis Krasner heard them play the Lyric Suite in Vienna in early 1935, fell in love with the second violinist, Adrienne Galimir, and married her.
6. The American issue, 1937
  The suite appeared in the United States on Brunswick-⁠Polydor as set BP No. 2, advertised in March 1937 alongside Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto with Samuel Dushkin and Roussel’s Third Symphony.
Open in the Concert Hall