Gunnar Berg was born
in Switzerland studying in Salzburg
and at the Royal Danish Academy. At
one stage he studied piano with Herman
Koppel whose seven symphonies are being
issued on Dacapo. Berg lived in Paris
1948-57 and married the pianist Béatrice
Berg in 1952 the same year that he attended
one of the Darmstadt summer courses.
During 1957-80 he lived in Denmark then,
until his death, in Switzerland. Béatrice,
whose spirit sustained Berg through
many years of neglect, died in 1976.
This music bristles
with avant-garde incident. Its unashamed
bearing is rooted in the splash and
scatter of Darmstadt fragmentation with
whispers, shudders, brittle dashes and
microscopic scuttles, furious romps,
belligerent shouts and vehement percussive
protests. This is not music of the epic
marathon but of the micro-mosaic. Long
lines and melody have been banished
although they sometimes put in a crippled
and fractured appearance in Uculang.
More usually shreds and shards fly around
the listener.
It seems that all these
pieces are notated so we are not in
aleatory-land. The music recalls the
Elliot Carter Piano Concerto which I
remember from Jacob Lateiner's RCA recording.
These pieces would fit like a glove
into London's Roundhouse experiments
of the 1970s.
The two disc set, the
first of a Berg series, has been sponsored
by the estate of the Bergs' own Maecenas,
Aage Damgaard (1917-1991). It is published
in collaboration with the Gunnar Berg
Working Group which includes the composer,
Tage Nielsen, Mogens Anderson, musicologist,
Erik Kaltoft, pianist and Jens Rossel,
music adviser.
This is music of pointillist
modernism rattling with explosive discontinuity.
It is not for the faint-hearted or the
melody-reliant. It is all superbly documented
and well presented especially given
the audio provenance of some of these
recordings. There is some audience noise
but nothing deleterious.
Rob Barnett