Berg: Wozzeck-Fragmente, für Klavier und Streichquintett

The Wozzeck Fragments were finished in summer 2010, the result of wanting to arrange a piece we love and which is generally highly esteemed. Moreover, the chamber-music factor is already highly characteristic in just that opera. That easily underestimated component of the great musical material is capable of considerably highlighting the reduction – quite in the spirit of the arrangements made for Schönberg’s Society for Private Music Performances.

For the scoring, we selected string quartet, piano and double bass; for the most part, the cello and the viola stand for Wozzeck and Marie respectively, generally following their vocal lines. Occasionally, the double bass substitutes for the percussion, imitating the timpani, whip and drums (especially effective in the dance sections). The three fragments correspond to the opera’s three acts, including material from the most important episodes, instrumental transitions and intermezzi.

Fragment 1 / Act 1
Scene 1: Wozzeck and the Captain. Scene 2: Wozzeck and Andres afield (rhapsody on three chords). Scene 3: Marie’s Lullaby

Fragment 2 / Act 2
This section mostly consists of arrangements of the dance music in the village tavern, a slow ländler and a waltz, including some other stage elements.

Fragment 3 / Act 3
This final section deals with a large amount of musical material from the opera. Scene 1 is given complete, and Scene 2 depicts Marie’s murder in the pond. An intermezzo follows, along with the scene in the tavern with the out-of-tune piano. It ends with the D-minor intermezzo, Scene 4 and the complete finale.

In making the arrangement, our main concern was not simply to line up the “best bits” out of the opera; we wanted to reconstruct the entire drama in smaller dimensions. The result is a progression of musical tensions on various levels, the psychological and objectivising factors of folk music playing an important part.

Alexej Grots [&] Alexej Lubimov