Brahms/Berio Viola Concerto Op.120/1

[Alan Howe]

Almost Elgarian in places:
(i)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nQZOWpnFB4
(ii) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY15JZ1iAeQ
(iii) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhqaq05BSTo
(iv) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfR9u_g6DyU

Amihai Grosz, viola
Hamburg Symphony Orchestra
Guy Braunstein, conductor
Live performance from 16th February 2017, Hamburg, Germany

[John Boyer]

There is a commercial recording of Luciano Berio's orchestration with the original clarinet solo on CPO, coupled with Schoenberg's orchestration of the First Piano Quartet.

I rather like the 13 bar introduction Berio added to the beginning. He felt that the original began too abruptly for a concerto.

I am also rather amused that Berio, he of the "cat walking across the keyboard" school of composition, would do such a good job in his treatment of Brahms. 

[eschiss1]

It was (he died two decades agone) hardly his first go at non-Modern orchestration- another involved the clarinet version of this same work; his orchestrations of some Mahler songs are recorded as is a more modern realization of Schubert's late D major symphonic fragment- etc.

[Alan Howe]

I was aware of the clarinet version - but I rather prefer the more autumnal 'feel' of the viola.

[Mark Thomas]

Yes, it suits the overall atmosphere of the piece very well and Berio's orchestration is idiomatic to a very convincing degree. Grosz is excellent but very much of the modern "inhale noisily before each phrase" school of soloists which, as he's quite closely miked, detracts from the recording although it isn't so noticeable when watching the video.