Berg – Music for piano and clarinet

I’ve got to be brief here, but then again, so was Berg. The Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano (op 5, 1913) are small (all but one are under two minutes long) and gem-like, the perfect answer (along with the Violin Concerto and Schonberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces) to the charge that all atonal music is ugly.

Sorry, that sounds unduly confrontational. It’s just that whenever I try to say anything nice about any music which happens to be atonal I feel as if I am putting my head above the parapet.

Equally interesting is the single-movement Piano Sonata (op 1) which is tonal, but is so chromatic you can practically hear the tonality dissolving. I want to listen to this a lot more.