Berg’s Violin Concerto

The violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg’s Concerto, though the job came while the composer was in the midst of writing his opera Lulu. The untimely death from Polio of 18-yearold Manon Gropius (daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler) in April 1935 inspired Berg to set his opera aside and bring the Concerto into fruition – indeed it is dedicated ‘to the memory of an angel’. That rather did it for Lulu, however, which went unfinished as Berg himself died in December 1935. The Concerto, Berg’s final completed work, premiered in Barcelona in April 1936.