condition (record/cover): NM / VG (minimal sticker removal residue on front, light stamp on back, some creases and general wear)

Wilhelm Georg Berger (1929-1993) was among the most prolific Romanian composers of the twentieth century - twenty-four symphonies, twenty-one string quartets, oratories, sonatas, concertos, and organ works, a body of music that won him prizes in Monaco (violin sonata, 1964), Liège (Sixth String Quartet, 1965), and Brussels (violin concerto, 1966), and that remained largely invisible outside Romania throughout his lifetime. He studied at the Bucharest Conservatory, played viola in the George Enescu Philharmonic, and was a member of the Romanian Composer Association string quartet - the performer's perspective informing everything he wrote for strings.

The two works on this Electrecord LP represent the concentrated chamber language of his mature period. The Sonata pentru vioară solo (Solo Violin Sonata) demands the kind of engagement with the unaccompanied violin that reaches back through Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin and Ysaÿe's six sonatas - technical rigor and expressive range negotiated without accompaniment, the instrument generating its own harmonic and rhythmic architecture. The Cvartetul de coarde nr. 6 (String Quartet No. 6), which won him the Liège Prize, is among his most structurally concentrated quartet movements - the six quartets written between 1961 and 1966 representing the core of his development as a chamber composer. Berger worked in a language that acknowledges the European modernist tradition - Bartók's influence is audible - without abandoning formal discipline or expressive directness. Original Electrecord pressing.