Alban Berg first met Schoenberg in 1904 and continued to study with his until 1910. It’s not certain exactly when he composed the Piano Sonata, but towards the end of his studies Berg started to work on exercises in sonata structures and it is likely that the work emerged from these in 1907–8. Published in 1910 by Schlesinger in Berlin and Haslinger in Vienna, the first public performance took place in Vienna on 24 April 1911, given by Etta Werndorff, another member of the Schoenberg circle who also gave the premiere of Schoenberg’s Klavierstücke Op. 11 (Schoenberg also painted her portrait twice). Douglas Jarman (in New Grove) described Berg’s Sonata as ‘the last work he wrote directly under his teacher’s guidance … in effect his graduation piece, the work in which he set out to demonstrate what he had learned from both Schoenberg’s teaching and Schoenberg’s music.’ The Sonata is a single movement, highly concentrated, in which Berg generates a number of distinctive ideas from short motifs (heard at the start) which serve as the musical seeds for a work of powerful originality. Following the precepts of his teacher, Berg is not afraid to look to the past for inspiration and the structure is broadly in sonata form (exposition–development–recapitulation). The musical language is more uncompromising, stretching the possibilities of post-Wagnerian harmonies to breaking point, but always with a highly expressive trajectory that is as much emotional as it is architectural. Berg’s Sonata is an outstanding ‘Opus One’, the young composer’s creative voice emerging more or less fully formed. 

Nigel Simeone 2024