Christoph von Dohnányi, The Cleveland Orchestra - Webern: Orchestral Works (1998)

Webern's "Symphony" (op. 21) is like light passing through a slowly revolving prism, revealing irridescent hues you've never seen before. Following his "Passacaglia" (op. 1), which clarifies but doesn't break with the Romanticism of Brahms, Webern composed four masterful orchestral miniatures. "6 Pieces" (op. 6) and "5 Pieces" (op. 10) are incredibly brief, in the atonal style pioneered by Webern's teacher Schoenberg.

They met with quite different fates -- the "6 Pieces" provoked a "Le Sacre"-style riot at its Vienna premiere in 1913, and Webern fled into hiding. The "5 Pieces" wasn't publicly performed until 1924, at a festival in Zurich, 10 years after it was written. It was widely acclaimed, establishing Webern's international reputation. (Thanks to John Keillor for these details.)

His masterpieces, in my opinion, are the serial works -- "Symphony" (op. 21) and "Variations" (op. 30). Despite their brevity (under 5 minutes and 7 minutes, respectively), these are two of the greatest compositions of the 20th century. Webern here developed Schoenberg's 12 tone rows into something exquisite, more beautiful than anything his teacher created. These works, along with the String Trio and Quartet (op. 20 and op. 28), became the main influence on the "Darmstadt School" of the 1950s (Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Ligeti, & Co.).

This disc is one of two that collect Webern's orchestral works. I give Dohnanyi and Cleveland a slight edge over Sinopoli with the Staatskapelle Dresden on Teldec , but they are both suberb recordings. Dohnanyi achieves a smooth, homogenous texture, whereas Sinopoli creates wider dynamics and greater separation of instruments. Dohnanyi's Webern is abstract, cold and restrained, while Sinopoli's Webern is more emotional, warmer and lusher by comparison (not by comparison to Mahler!).

The two discs contain the same material, with one exception -- Dohnanyi includes Webern's arrangement of Bach's "Fuga ricercata a 6," a fascinating exercise in pointillism, breaking the music into consituent cells. Sinopoli includes the "Concerto" (op. 24) for 9 instruments, a Bach-influenced composition. On recording quality, the Teldec is superior.

The Dohnanyi booklet includes a great photo of Webern, with a tragic expression absolutely apropos to the music, but the cover is a photo of Dohnanyi, and I detest this tradition in classical music. The Sinopoli booklet features instead a photo of a haunting sculpture by the British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, and keeps the photo of Sinopoli inside, and so it wins the graphic design competition!