BERG - SCHOENBERG Lyric Suite / Transfigured Night (Verklärte Nacht) Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi

The First World War, that crucible of every kind of artistic change, intervened between Berg’s Lyric Suite (1925) and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (1899). On either side of that traumatic divide, each of the works refers to adulterous love. The poem by Richard Dehmel that inspired Transfigured Night evokes the conception of an illegitimate child and its pardon. The amorous dialogue between Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs and its painful epilogue form the subtext to the composition of the Lyric Suite.