It's CD review day!

Why did I buy a disk featuring Alban Berg's Lulu-Suite? Berg is one of the composers I find most interesting and I eventually want to have every major work from his pen--along with Messiaen, Schoenberg, Beethoven, Stravinsky… Give me a few more minutes and I can probably think of a half-dozen more composers who are that important to me! If you'd like to learn more about Herr Berg, you can visit the AllMusic.com page about him. Mostly what I'd like you to know is that he was one of the first composers who could be called "atonal". He actually wasn't particularly atonal, truth be told, since that means a style of music where all pitches are equally important. He tended to have a central, primary pitch for his works and simply followed a rather different set of rules to get there!

The Lulu-Suite is beautifully played here by the London Symphony Orchestra, showing the dark lyricism of Berg's opera highlights with great balance and giving his slow-motion rhythms a bit more movement than we usually find. Like his other opera, Wozzeck, Berg seems to get a little lost, melodically speaking, and the tunes can be a bit stiff--especially the featured vocal melody in the suite.

Claudio Abbado is the conductor for all three works here, including the Three Orchestra Pieces--which every label uses to fill up a Berg disk. The Three Pieces are not Berg's best works, nor his most famous, but this is another good recording of them (in case you haven't heard them before, you'll do fine with this disk). The CD is rounded out with the less-familiar Altenberg Songs suite, sung by Margaret Price. She really gets Berg's way with a melody and melts the phrases beautifully with just enough tartness to keep the old master's occasionally cloying melodies from becoming too rich.

The Altenberg Songs aren't the strongest work and Abbado's leadership is fine, but there is nothing on this disk that so distinguishes the performances to deserve a very high ranking. I suppose that's the worst thing I can say!

7 out of 10

CDs listened to today:

• Vittorio Giannini: Symphony No. 3
• Jesus Jones: Doubt
• Gyorgy Ligeti: Requiem
• Frank Ezra Levy: Symphony No. 4, "Structures of the Mind"
• Bob Mould: Black Sheets Of Rain
• Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain
• Olivier Messiaen: Quatre Etudes de Rhythme
• Sam Phillips: Fan Dance
• Esa-Pekka Salonen: L.A. Variations