Alban Berg only wrote two operas, but they turned the genre upside down, leaving a searing, unignorable legacy to his 20th-century successors. Wozzeck is the tragedy of a simple soldier broken and brutalised by an all-too-believable world. Lulu was left unfinished at Berg’s death in 1935, but its story of a woman living—and dying—through her own sensuality continues to grip and provoke. The German conductor Karl Böhm knew Berg, and these historic stereo recordings have a force and an authenticity that feels like he has a hotline to the composer’s subconscious. The singers, too, are exceptional, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at the peak of his career and soprano Evelyn Lear as Lulu, a role that she created just eight years before this incomplete (but still shattering) recording.
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
- Anja Silja, Eberhard Wächter, Hermann Winkler, Wiener Staatsopernchor, Vienna Philharmonic & Christoph von Dohnányi
- Ben Heppner, Deborah Voigt, Giuseppe Sinopoli & Staatskapelle Dresden
- Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Berlin Philharmonic & Daniel Barenboim
- Wilhelm Furtwängler & Philharmonia Orchestra
- Gustav Neidlinger, Hans Hotter, Hans Knappertsbusch, Irene Dalis, Jess Thomas & Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
- Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Otto Edelmann, Christa Ludwig, Eberhard Wächter, Teresa Stich-Randall, Ljuba Welitsch, Paul Kuen, Kerstin Meyer, Nicolai Gedda, Franz Bierbach, Erich Majkut, Gerhard Unger, Harald Pröglhöf, Karl Friedrich, Anny Felbermayer, Philharmonia Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra & Children's Chorus from Loughton High School for Girls and Bancroft's School
- Rudolf Kempe & Staatskapelle Dresden