The mark of genius is you don't know you need what it provides until it provides it. Who knew the guitar could be a Berg Opus 1 vehicle? You did -- bravo to your skill, imagination, and artistry.
A truly incredible arrangement of a difficult and dense work , and a masterful performance, being a pianist i can learn a lot from your viewpoint of this marvelous piece. So tighten structurally and intellectually, and so Passionate and loving at the same time. Viva Berg.
The Score for my guitar arrangement of Alban Berg Sonata opus 1 is now available at Universal Edition. Best wishes for you all. www.universaledition.com/sheet-music-and-more/sonate-fuer-gitarre-berg-alban-ue36674
I’ve played this piece in the original, so complex I would never have believed it would be translatable for guitar. This is excellent, you bring out so much from the depths into the light in this wonderful arrangement. Fantastisk spill, gratulerer! Hilsen fra 🇳🇴
This might be the best video on UA-cam and yet it only has 30,000 views. This might be better than the original seriously. This guy has just become my personal Yngwie Malmsteen.
¡Qué lujo, para un español, escuchar la transcripción de esta partitura adaptada a este instrumento tan típico de nuestra tierra! Muchas gracias. Sencillamente MARAVILLOSO.
Amazing, I think the level of the classic guitarr today is favoulous because of artist like you, and so specially music of the begining of 20th century, thankou so much.
As a lover of 20th century music I've always been bothered by how little appeal Berg and Bartok have for me. Tried them both many times and they've always left me cold. What's wrong with me? Tonight I happened upon your arrangement of Bartok's Sonata for Violin and once it was translated to the guitar (which I love) and played so marvelously well it all just clicked! Then I saw that you had also done Berg's Sonata and thought I should see what happens. AGAIN your wonderful transcription and arrangement and great performance just brought out everything in the piece I had never connected with before, and finally a Berg piece is immensely satisfying. And I know that now I've got the 'Rosetta Stone' to help me connect with their other works. Thanks for fixing my brain!
So far I find your Bartok Sonata for Guitar and this piece-i really enjoy these pieces and is how I'd like to play but they are difficult,not only your playing but how you remember these passages is the skill ! I hope you do maybe a Bartok or Shostakovitch string quartet sometime..Best wishes and stay well Mr Dejour!
Just starting to discover atonal guitar. Always enjoyed American Primitive guitar but apart from Peter Walker, not too many use the nylon string guitar. I really enjoy this stuff!
Thanks Paul Smith for the kind words. The sheet music for the Berg Sonata will soon be published by Universal Edition and available on the marked the 1. of July 2016
this is really so wonderful, I love it. i have worked on numerous early 20th century arrangements for guitar, this music is so difficult to translate onto the fretboard. Thank you so much for bringing Berg to the guitar.
Den bedste UA-cam oplevelse jeg har haft længe, og så bor du lige i nabolaget ;-) Du spiller uhørt musikalsk og velfraseret, og det er simpelthen vidunderlig musik. Hørte også din Bartok sonate. Fantastisk !
Absolutely wonderful performance, stunning. One of the best interpretation of Berg Sonata, sorry for the pianists (i'm one of them...)! Many compliments mr Dejour, for both transcription and performance.
+Dan Bondarenko, Well actually Leibo07 is right, - it is tonal! Of course the tonality is stretched to the limit, but it is actually possible to make a tonal analyze of the Sonata from A to Z. But I sure understand the feeling of the music being on the way to something beyond tonality, especially when we today know what kind of music Alban Berg wrote later on. All the best wishes to you :-)
Christophe Dejour I see. I will have to be more careful about when I use the term 'atonal' in the future. Although atonality is still the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear music like this. Calling it tonal doesn't really...feel quite right. :)
This arrangement makes you a personal friend of Alban Berg i am sure, and mr. Berg a very interesting guitarcomposer. Congratulations on this wonderful music and performance!
Beautiful and beautifully played. It inspired me to purchase your exquisite arrangement. Followed your video with the Universal Edition I received today. It is even more inspiring. Wonderful!
Impressionism and 20th- century classical composers used and invented all harmonies and progressions that are used in today popular music especially in modern jazz.
I was wondering not even two days ago whether or not someone had transcribed this for guitar. Perhaps one of the best first opuses of any composer that I know of and a personal favorite of mine, although I'm not particularly fond of serialism (which I don't believe this piece is). Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful performance. Also, if you'd ever be willing to share or sell the transcription, please let me know. I'd love to learn this.
Absolutely beautiful performance - so very sensitively played! What a monumental achievement in transcribing this for guitar. I just ordered a copy of your printed edition - I can only imagine how long this project took you. If you know the reference, this piece reminds me of the works of Jimmy Wyble. Odd harmonies and melodies right on the edge of what one might expect, and, the modern. Very satisfying for guitarists who have been playing and listening for years and want their fingers and minds to find new places to go. Once again, congratulations - and thanks!
Armand Qualliotine, hi Armand Thanks for your comments. Regarding the notation og bar 143: two layers, the upper layer play 6 16th. and the lower play 4 16th. (Polyrhythm 6 over 4) Hope it is aswering your question. Best Christophe
Thanks Stewart. The Berg Sonata will soon be published by Universal Edition and available in July 2016 Havent tried anything by Schoenberg..... yet ;-)
Allora anche Liszt bagatella senza tonalità, anche se in realtà è un si minore allargato, la stessa tonalità della sonata di Berg! Forse composizioni realmente a tonali scritte prima della sonata di Berg sono alcune composizioni di Ives,ad esempio LARGO per violino clarinetto e pianoforte,del 1902.
This is one of the last pieces Alban Berg wrote before he turned to 12 tone music. So it’s actually not 12 tone yet. 😊 but you get the feeling what the furure brings. 😊❤️
I cant listen for more than 5 minutes without the risk of getting a headache. Great players should invest their time into other pieces. I m just expressing my opinion here and no, I m not pressing the dislike button because I value the effort. Nevertheless I need to say this is horrible.
Stop expecting it to conform to do-re-mi harmony and it will eventually speak to you. Berg's music is almost hyper-romantic. The next logical extension of Mahler, with a few things borrowed from Debussy, Wagner, and Schoenberg. It's pretty stuff if you accept it on its own terms.
Perhaps you should listen to it on the piano. The player here is very gifted, but this music on the guitar is more of a curiosity (like Yamashita´s transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition): I find it difficult to listen to, because I remember the original, and this is so reduced. Would be fine if had originally been written for the guitar, but when you listen to the piano, the whole point are the dense, interweaving harmonies and deep sonorities which the guitar does not even come close to evoking, even though Mr. Dejour is certainly a master and a very expressive player, with a nice color palette. The overall result sounds hollow, brittle and small next to the original, and perhaps forcing the guitar to the limit (I would say the same of Yamashita´s arrangements). A Ponce sonata comes across more effectively because it was written with the possibilities of the guitar in mind.
I'd simply like to respond that the period in which Berg wrote this piece was "over ripe" to say the least. Harmonies got very thick indeed. Though the guitar version reduces this somewhat, it is almost refreshing (no disrespect to the original piano version, which I love in the right hands, say those of Pollini). This transcription is a distillation of Berg's works, perhaps into a 'post-modern/contemporary' (or whatever the hell you'd call it) idiom. I would not take his interpretation to task, but rather listen to it with fresh ears.
Just wanted to add that this transcription is down a fifth from the original piano version, and because of that he has to jump octaves quite a bit to keep the piece within the guitar's range. The Jorge Caballero video is a different transcription in the original key. He plays it markedly faster, too and uses a lot of harmonics for the higher notes.
The dense harmonies melting into each other are Berg´s signature and are a very unique and original form of musical beauty. But the piece is nonetheless very lyrical - the open mind and "fresh ears" can hardly mix up this music with later "bang and clank" avantguarde music. From a guitarristic point of view, this is something very different and kudos to Mr. Dejour. However, "somewhat reduced" harmonies is an understatement. This is like looking at Berg from the reversed side of the telescope: much is hazy, lost or has simply vanished. So, at times, Berg here comes to sounding like Antonio José´s Sonata or Cyrll Scott or some other more progressive composer who wrote for the guitar during Segovia´s time. This is because there´s also a kind of ressonance, sustain and depth that Berg´s music demands that the guitar just doesn´t have and which is also an integral part of the composer´s signature sound. Like Gould´s transcriptions of Wagner on the piano: something essential - very essential - is left out even if the result is pulled off with mastery. Perhaps "destillation" is a better term. My own difficulty is not with this performance, interpretation or transcription: it is with having heard Pollini and Gould play it on the piano. This is an effect that a transcription that really works performed by a master sidesteps (i.e. Albéniz, Scarlatti, Granados). Today I watched March Teicholz perform Chopin on the guitar: wonderfully played...except that if you´ve heard the originals, you look at such transcriptions as awesome curiosities, but only limited to guitar circles. The transcription that remains under the shadow of the original somehow does not quite work...even if it does. That said, I think Mr. Dejour´s thinking should always be encouraged. Paul Galbraight, with a modified guitar, thinks along these lines and has produced awesome results by modifying the possibilities with extra strings and ressonance. With his transcriptions (I would like to see him do this Berg sonata), the shadow of the original is dissipated and the work appears in a new light, equally enthralling and delightful as the original, but with something unique that the guitar has given.
Epic!!! But!.. Too much hurry, not rubato but uneveness, confusing tempo and phrasing, bass lines too much remarked in demeanor of the melody and harmony, almost ausence of breathing between musical sections, a certain lack of appropiated rely on the various moments of clímax of the piece...
The mark of genius is you don't know you need what it provides until it provides it. Who knew the guitar could be a Berg Opus 1 vehicle? You did -- bravo to your skill, imagination, and artistry.
A truly incredible arrangement of a difficult and dense work , and a masterful performance, being a pianist i can learn a lot from your viewpoint of this marvelous piece. So tighten structurally and intellectually, and so Passionate and loving at the same time. Viva Berg.
The Score for my guitar arrangement of Alban Berg Sonata opus 1 is now available at Universal Edition.
Best wishes for you all.
www.universaledition.com/sheet-music-and-more/sonate-fuer-gitarre-berg-alban-ue36674
I’ve played this piece in the original, so complex I would never have believed it would be translatable for guitar. This is excellent, you bring out so much from the depths into the light in this wonderful arrangement. Fantastisk spill, gratulerer! Hilsen fra 🇳🇴
This might be the best video on UA-cam and yet it only has 30,000 views. This might be better than the original seriously. This guy has just become my personal Yngwie Malmsteen.
The guitar really brings out the lyricism and voicing in this piece. Great contribution to the musical history of this masterpiece.
I didn't think it would be possible. Total respect!
.... Thank you very much to you all for the kind words, I really apriciate 😊
Stunning. Every time.
The classical guitar sounds so natural, so warm. its my favorite instrument.
¡Qué lujo, para un español, escuchar la transcripción de esta partitura adaptada a este instrumento tan típico de nuestra tierra! Muchas gracias. Sencillamente MARAVILLOSO.
Wow. What a surprise. Wonderful, just wonderful!
What a beautiful music and tone!
Amazing, I think the level of the classic guitarr today is favoulous because of artist like you, and so specially music of the begining of 20th century, thankou so much.
Outstanding. I wish this was available on CD.
Godt gået Christophe! Meget af Alban Bergs "skyggeagtige" porøse kommer perfekt frem i dit guitar arrangement og spil.
Very beautiful!!! I am a pianist, I studied this work at the end of the eighties.
absolutely brilliant!
As a lover of 20th century music I've always been bothered by how little appeal Berg and Bartok have for me. Tried them both many times and they've always left me cold. What's wrong with me? Tonight I happened upon your arrangement of Bartok's Sonata for Violin and once it was translated to the guitar (which I love) and played so marvelously well it all just clicked! Then I saw that you had also done Berg's Sonata and thought I should see what happens. AGAIN your wonderful transcription and arrangement and great performance just brought out everything in the piece I had never connected with before, and finally a Berg piece is immensely satisfying. And I know that now I've got the 'Rosetta Stone' to help me connect with their other works. Thanks for fixing my brain!
Excellent music, arrangement, execution, sound and interpretation!!!
Like it more every time I hear it. Thanks again Christophe!
So far I find your Bartok Sonata for Guitar and this piece-i really enjoy these pieces and is how I'd like to play but they are difficult,not only your playing but how you remember these passages is the skill !
I hope you do maybe a Bartok or Shostakovitch string quartet sometime..Best wishes and stay well Mr Dejour!
Just starting to discover atonal guitar. Always enjoyed American Primitive guitar but apart from Peter Walker, not too many use the nylon string guitar. I really enjoy this stuff!
Wonderful playing, Christophe. Incredible tone and phrasing. Love to hear more :-)
Fantastic version of Berg's music - a tour de force on guitar
Am a pianist and very impressed with your work!
Excellent. This is a substantial addition to the repertoire. Congrats.
Thanks Paul Smith for the kind words. The sheet music for the Berg Sonata will soon be published by Universal Edition and available on the marked the 1. of July 2016
+Christophe Dejour great! thanks for the info
this is really so wonderful, I love it. i have worked on numerous early 20th century arrangements for guitar, this music is so difficult to translate onto the fretboard. Thank you so much for bringing Berg to the guitar.
Amazing!
Den bedste UA-cam oplevelse jeg har haft længe, og så bor du lige i nabolaget ;-)
Du spiller uhørt musikalsk og velfraseret, og det er simpelthen vidunderlig musik.
Hørte også din Bartok sonate. Fantastisk !
Absolutely wonderful performance, stunning. One of the best interpretation of Berg Sonata, sorry for the pianists (i'm one of them...)! Many compliments mr Dejour, for both transcription and performance.
I wouldn't have imagined that atonal music sounds so good on a classical guitar! Love it!
Leibo07 Oh, okay. I'm curious about what is instead then?
+Dan Bondarenko, Well actually Leibo07 is right, - it is tonal! Of course the tonality is stretched to the limit, but it is actually possible to make a tonal analyze of the Sonata from A to Z. But I sure understand the feeling of the music being on the way to something beyond tonality, especially when we today know what kind of music Alban Berg wrote later on. All the best wishes to you :-)
Christophe Dejour I see. I will have to be more careful about when I use the term 'atonal' in the future. Although atonality is still the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear music like this. Calling it tonal doesn't really...feel quite right. :)
Bad ass!!! Really great, thank you
This arrangement makes you a personal friend of Alban Berg i am sure, and mr. Berg a very interesting guitarcomposer. Congratulations on this wonderful music and performance!
Wonderful!
One aspect of great players of all genres: they make the guitar look small.
Beautiful and beautifully played. It inspired me to purchase your exquisite arrangement. Followed your video with the Universal Edition I received today. It is even more inspiring. Wonderful!
Nicely done indeed and long overdue Christophe. Beautiful.
Complimenti: ottima esecuzione, interpretazione e trascrizione!
24 de Enero de 2016.- Escuchando este buen arreglo para guitarra.
Astonishingly beautiful!
Absolutely stunning !
Great Performance!!!
I find this extraordinary. Thank you!
Superbe interprétation!
So beautiful!
Well, I have to admit that it sounds very good. I'll check the score.
Well done indeed. Please post a notice when it is published.
c'est magnifique
Impressionism and 20th- century classical composers used and invented all harmonies and progressions that are used in today popular music especially in modern jazz.
Masterful performance and Transcription! Congratulations! Bravo!
The score is available, the same version, I have it.
Impressive.
Wonderful piece, wonderful arrangement, wonderful reading!
maravilhosovisk! parabensovisk!
Wonderful..Somebody mentioned it already, I agree. This sounds more lyrical on the guitar. In comparison I find it overpowering on the piano.
Did you try the Glenn Gould's version?...
Bravo
quem tem ouvidos para ouvir, OUSE
Awesome !
The Jocko Willink of the guitar. Extreme ownership.
Awesome Transcriptions C.D
gratulations! perfect
Hervorragend
I was wondering not even two days ago whether or not someone had transcribed this for guitar. Perhaps one of the best first opuses of any composer that I know of and a personal favorite of mine, although I'm not particularly fond of serialism (which I don't believe this piece is). Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful performance.
Also, if you'd ever be willing to share or sell the transcription, please let me know. I'd love to learn this.
+estranged520 Dutilleux's piano sonata is another great op. 1.
Thank you!
sounds like Toru Takemitsu
Magnifique!
世界には面白い人が沢山いるなー
Opening sounds like a guitar piece!
Fantastic
If you're new to this music, try listening for the rhythm of Hark the Herald Angels Sing....it appears frequently...
James Walker what makes you say? Made me laugh singing along to this with those lyrics
Absolutely beautiful performance - so very sensitively played! What a monumental achievement in transcribing this for guitar. I just ordered a copy of your printed edition - I can only imagine how long this project took you. If you know the reference, this piece reminds me of the works of Jimmy Wyble. Odd harmonies and melodies right on the edge of what one might expect, and, the modern. Very satisfying for guitarists who have been playing and listening for years and want their fingers and minds to find new places to go. Once again, congratulations - and thanks!
wonderful to hear die neuer wiener schule on guitar! sechs kleine klavierstücke next? beautiful! 🎸😎
just about a week and the sheet music should be out :D
The moving music I've heard on UA-cam in years. Thanks for posting. Is this available to buy?
Wow
Awesome
Fantastisk spillet og flot video!
Niklas Johansen Tusind Tak 😊
Mr. Dejour,
Transcription well done and wonder performance! Do not understand the rhythmic notation the last beat of m.143?
Armand Qualliotine
Armand Qualliotine, hi Armand Thanks for your comments. Regarding the notation og bar 143: two layers, the upper layer play 6 16th. and the lower play 4 16th. (Polyrhythm 6 over 4) Hope it is aswering your question. Best Christophe
Какое фантастическое исполнение,какой потрясающий звук!!! Очень интересное произведение,необычное. Спасибо! Скажите кто конструктор гитары?
A beautiful transcription and performance. Is the transcription available?
Also have you set Schoenberg piano pieces to guitar?
Thanks Stewart. The Berg Sonata will soon be published by Universal Edition and available in July 2016
Havent tried anything by Schoenberg..... yet ;-)
Fantastic! Here, another great transcription and performance made by Jorge Caballero: ua-cam.com/video/FKFktMpTPtQ/v-deo.html
Great arrangement, where can I get this on sheet music?
Sounds like Toru Takemitsu when played on guitar
Is this score able to be shipped to the US?
This is the very, very first piece of atonal music.
It's not very atonal, it's actually in B minor, and you can hear it start with II V I
And the first chord in Tristan is G#m6 inverted. No. Music theorists call this the first atonal piece. I know about ii V I.
not schoenebrg op 11?
Allora anche Liszt bagatella senza tonalità, anche se in realtà è un si minore allargato, la stessa tonalità della sonata di Berg! Forse composizioni realmente a tonali scritte prima della sonata di Berg sono alcune composizioni di Ives,ad esempio LARGO per violino clarinetto e pianoforte,del 1902.
Neither the first nor atonal.
Lyrical dissonance. That's what Alban Berg was all about..
12 tone music on guitar is peak AIDs. good job.
This is one of the last pieces Alban Berg wrote before he turned to 12 tone music. So it’s actually not 12 tone yet. 😊 but you get the feeling what the furure brings. 😊❤️
This isn't 12 tone, that began in 1925 with the Schoenberg Suite op. 25
Alas, the link to the score appears to be broken.
I hope the link is working again, Thanks Tyler!
Yep. Thanks!
Dissonantly Lyrical . Berg.
I cant listen for more than 5 minutes without the risk of getting a headache. Great players should invest their time into other pieces. I m just expressing my opinion here and no, I m not pressing the dislike button because I value the effort. Nevertheless I need to say this is horrible.
Stop expecting it to conform to do-re-mi harmony and it will eventually speak to you. Berg's music is almost hyper-romantic. The next logical extension of Mahler, with a few things borrowed from Debussy, Wagner, and Schoenberg. It's pretty stuff if you accept it on its own terms.
Perhaps you should listen to it on the piano.
The player here is very gifted, but this music on the guitar is more of a curiosity (like Yamashita´s transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition): I find it difficult to listen to, because I remember the original, and this is so reduced. Would be fine if had originally been written for the guitar, but when you listen to the piano, the whole point are the dense, interweaving harmonies and deep sonorities which the guitar does not even come close to evoking, even though Mr. Dejour is certainly a master and a very expressive player, with a nice color palette. The overall result sounds hollow, brittle and small next to the original, and perhaps forcing the guitar to the limit (I would say the same of Yamashita´s arrangements). A Ponce sonata comes across more effectively because it was written with the possibilities of the guitar in mind.
I'd simply like to respond that the period in which Berg wrote this piece was "over ripe" to say the least. Harmonies got very thick indeed. Though the guitar version reduces this somewhat, it is almost refreshing (no disrespect to the original piano version, which I love in the right hands, say those of Pollini). This transcription is a distillation of Berg's works, perhaps into a 'post-modern/contemporary' (or whatever the hell you'd call it) idiom. I would not take his interpretation to task, but rather listen to it with fresh ears.
Just wanted to add that this transcription is down a fifth from the original piano version, and because of that he has to jump octaves quite a bit to keep the piece within the guitar's range. The Jorge Caballero video is a different transcription in the original key. He plays it markedly faster, too and uses a lot of harmonics for the higher notes.
The dense harmonies melting into each other are Berg´s signature and are a very unique and original form of musical beauty. But the piece is nonetheless very lyrical - the open mind and "fresh ears" can hardly mix up this music with later "bang and clank" avantguarde music.
From a guitarristic point of view, this is something very different and kudos to Mr. Dejour. However, "somewhat reduced" harmonies is an understatement. This is like looking at Berg from the reversed side of the telescope: much is hazy, lost or has simply vanished. So, at times, Berg here comes to sounding like Antonio José´s Sonata or Cyrll Scott or some other more progressive composer who wrote for the guitar during Segovia´s time. This is because there´s also a kind of ressonance, sustain and depth that Berg´s music demands that the guitar just doesn´t have and which is also an integral part of the composer´s signature sound. Like Gould´s transcriptions of Wagner on the piano: something essential - very essential - is left out even if the result is pulled off with mastery.
Perhaps "destillation" is a better term. My own difficulty is not with this performance, interpretation or transcription: it is with having heard Pollini and Gould play it on the piano. This is an effect that a transcription that really works performed by a master sidesteps (i.e. Albéniz, Scarlatti, Granados).
Today I watched March Teicholz perform Chopin on the guitar: wonderfully played...except that if you´ve heard the originals, you look at such transcriptions as awesome curiosities, but only limited to guitar circles.
The transcription that remains under the shadow of the original somehow does not quite work...even if it does.
That said, I think Mr. Dejour´s thinking should always be encouraged. Paul Galbraight, with a modified guitar, thinks along these lines and has produced awesome results by modifying the possibilities with extra strings and ressonance. With his transcriptions (I would like to see him do this Berg sonata), the shadow of the original is dissipated and the work appears in a new light, equally enthralling and delightful as the original, but with something unique that the guitar has given.
Is this one of those shred recordings ?
Epic!!!
But!..
Too much hurry, not rubato but uneveness, confusing tempo and phrasing, bass lines too much remarked in demeanor of the melody and harmony, almost ausence of breathing between musical sections, a certain lack of appropiated rely on the various moments of clímax of the piece...
BS +bad english = no comprendo. I'll only note he uses free strokes on the bass notes, so what's yer beef? This is stupendous.
Where's your recording so we can compare?
This piece is terrible when played on guitar.