With Understanding Comes Appreciation
In the years following his death in 1945, Anton Webern’s works became the Rosetta Stone of post-war Serial composers. One of his big champions was conductor Robert Craft, under whose direction Columbia Masterworks recorded Webern’s complete works between 1954 and 1956. Marni Nixon of Hollywood “ghost singer” fame brings pinpointed agility and spot-on intonation to the songs, supported by Schoenberg scholar Leonard Stein’s brilliant handling of the piano parts. Indeed, Stein’s contributions are one of the cycle’s key assets in regard to his attentive phrasing, voicing, and dynamic scaling. For this reason, his Variations Op. 27 and bracing collaborations with violinist Ralph Schaeffer in the Op. 7 Four Pieces and with cellist Emmet Sargeant in the Op. 11 Three Little Pieces still hold their own.
These pioneering recordings, now more than half a century old, have been transferred to CD for the first time and available for streaming at Hi-Res. Sony Classical was pleased to announce in 2022 a new batch of reissues from the CBS/Sony and RCA Victor/BMG back catalogues. This latest installment of the popular series showcases Mozart and Chopin along with conductor Robert Craft’s pioneering Webern recordings and the global journeys of that irrepressible musical explorer Yo-Yo Ma.
The works of the Austrian composer Anton Webern were to have a far greater influence on subsequent composers than that of his teacher Arnold Schoenberg, but when he died tragically in 1945 they were still virtually unknown to the musical public. That situation changed dramatically in 1957 with the release of a 4-LP box set of Webern’s complete works. High Fidelity called it “an epical undertaking, and one that has been accomplished with epical success. Robert Craft and his associates spent two years recording the music of Anton Webern. They perform it magnificently, they have had the utmost painstaking collaboration from Columbia, and the whole will remain for a very long time as one of the major monuments of modern discography.” This epoch-making project now appears for the first time on a 4-album set from Sony Classical.