“Theo Verbey (1959-2019) offers a richly romantic, colourful transcription of the Berg […]”

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

The notion of orchestrating a work for piano (or a piece of chamber music), in this case the single-movement Opus One Sonata of Alban Berg, begs the question, why? You may create something that overshadows the original (Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures) or something destined for virtual oblivion even if you can conduct it yourself (Weingartner’s scoring of Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’), or that complements on an equal footing, such as Boulez’s extravagant re-working of five of the twelve Notations (he intended transforming the lot) and, rather different, if also twelve in number, David Matthews’s arranging of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons (month by month, all are posted on this site). Theo Verbey (1959-2019) offers a richly romantic, colourful transcription of the Berg, bringing out anticipations of the much-later Lulu, offset by solo strings. Andrew Davis has also orchestrated Berg’s Sonata. In repeating the exposition, Davis varies the instrumentation, whereas Verbey does not. Dima Slobodeniouk (add spectacles to the above photo) conjured a story-telling rendition of this short (roughly twelve minutes) debut publication that is painstakingly personal yet also openly yields to outside influences.