Anton Webern
Slow Movement ((arr. for string orchestra)

At the threshold of the 20th century, classical music underwent an almost uncanny intensification: emotions grew ever more urgent, harmonies increasingly daring, textures ever richer. Among the composers who pushed late romanticism to its very limits –  while also wondering what might lie beyond – was the young radical Anton Webern. Born in 1883 into a musical Viennese family,  the student of Arnold Schoenberg was well acquainted with the latest developments. Even before his official Opus 1, Webern composed the Langsamer Satz, or Slow Movement, for string quartet in 1905 – a work steeped in the fervour of late romanticism. As in his teacher’ssextet Verklärte Nacht or Gustav Mahler’s Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony – both written only shortly beforehand – the melodies seem to flow on endlessly, oscillating between love, melancholy, drama, and ecstasy.

The piece was prompted partly by a homework assignment from Schoenberg, but also by Webern’s passionate love for his cousin Wilhelmine Mörtl, with whom he took a hiking holiday and whom he later married. Webern later lost interest in completing the original plan for a four-movement string quartet. Yet the lush scoring – reminiscent of Verklärte Nacht, which Schoenberg himself reworked for string orchestra – practically invited an orchestral version. This was undertaken by the American conductor Gerard Schwarz.