We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to browse, you agree to saving BSO and third-party cookies on your device. See our privacy policy. Everything from jazz to pop, rock to big band, film music to the great American songbook, and Broadway to classical. Our historic concert hall in Boston, Massachusetts, world-renowned for its lively acoustics. The piece is about 20 minutes long.
At the beginning of Berg was at a critical point in his artistic development. He had not yet reached the crossroads of his opera Wozzeck , which was to occupy him for five years between and and which would permanently alter the history of opera.
But in he was fully involved with problems that had paralyzed his creativity for months and that would be resolved only by time, dogged effort, and the turn of events. Disgusted by the experience, Berg never again attempted to get the Altenberg Songs performed. They did not receive a complete performance anywhere until There was another reason as well.
But Berg took it to heart all the same, and after a year of soul-searching during which he composed only the Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, Opus 5, another exercise in brevity that he was later to find unsatisfactory , began to write the Three Pieces for Orchestra.
If Schoenberg wanted from Berg a work which in terms of dimensions and development would be the opposite of the two songs which he had performed, he certainly got one. Berg wrote to his wife on July 11, Small wonder, then, that Berg did not finish the Three Pieces until nearly a year after the Great War began, and then did not compose anything at all for two years, when his absorption with Wozzeck would conquer his disillusionment.
