About the creation

Jacob Gilboa writes on his works "Reflections on three CHords of Alban Berg" as follows: The second scene in Act One of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" has always been to me a source of special fascination. In the conversation between Wozzeck and Andres cutting wood in the forest at dusk the contrast is most impressively drawn between worlds apart from each other: the bitter reality of Wozzeck's world and the naively gay and unconcerned idle talk of Andres. The clash of temperaments and the constant conflict between tragedy and light-heartedness are in fact the spiritually dominating foundations of Berg's great opera. The scene in the forest is dominated by three chords first sounded by wind instruments and then taken up by the strings. The chords convey a dark premonition of the tragedy to come. They cannot be analysed in the way of conventional harmonic analysis; Alban Berg described them in one of his commentaries on the opera as forming a "Klangfarben-Melodie" (tone-color-melody), such as his teacher and friend Arnold Schoenberg spoke of them already in his "Harmonielehre". The "tone color melody" of these three chords doubtlessly creates a singular feeling of atmosphere and of tension; Berg - who used musical forms, like Sonata, Passacaglia, and others, as foundations for each scene of the opera - described the forest scene musical structure as "Rhapsody on three Chords". In my composition I have tried to build a sort of symbolical counterpoint to the harmonies of Alban Berg's three chords - which are sounded in bars 6 and 7 - and to develop in my own way this short and powerful theme. I have tried to keep intact the inherent contrasts and - as far as is possible in the frame of a work for the piano - to retain the tone colours of these three characteristic chords.