Alban Berg

Alban Berg spent his whole life in Vienna, where he began as a self-taught songwriter until Arnold Schoenberg took him on as a student in 1904. From Schoenberg he learned a rigorous modern style, but Berg softened it with a warmth and nostalgia that made his music the most approachable of his circle.

He worked slowly and left a small catalog, most of it now central to the repertoire. His opera Wozzeck, about a poor soldier driven to breaking point, made his name in 1925. He died at fifty of blood poisoning from an infected insect bite, leaving his second opera, Lulu, unfinished.

Start with the Violin Concerto, written in memory of an eighteen-year-old friend who had just died and finished months before Berg's own death. Then try the Lyric Suite for string quartet.