18 BERG ∙ BRAHMS ∙ POULENC ∙ SCHUMANN Alban Berg’s Four Pieces op.5, dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg, form a set of miniatures that are at once post-Romantic and already Expressionist. Do you see this work as marking a break in musical language from the Romanticism of Brahms, or do you see continuity? Michel Portal: I’ve played Berg’s music for a long time, including the Kammerkonzert. His op.5 consists of a suite of miniatures, but only the fourth piece suggests a more pronounced narrative character. Michel Dalberto: Berg’s works stand very much in the German Romantic tradition. If I wanted to be provocative, I would say that, like the Piano Sonata op.1, these pieces descend in a direct line from Brahms, but with a lot more wrong notes [laughter]. It’s music with an aphoristic character that reminds me of Schoenberg’s Klavierstücke op.11 and op.19, which I’ve played, not forgetting Berg’s famous Kammerkonzert – the Chamber Concerto for piano, violin and thirteen wind instruments – and songs. I became interested in the music of the Second Viennese School in the late eighties and early nineties. It’s an imaginative, poetic sound world that touches me deeply. I came to it through Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles, which I studied at the Paris Conservatoire, and thanks to works I heard in the concert hall like Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, which I first encountered in a concert I gave under the direction of Michael Gielen and which made a great impact on me.
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