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Robert Craft(Sony Classical, four CDs)Webern’s music was revolutionary, but did not become widely accessible until Craft directed this series of recordingsIn the decades after the second world war it was the music of Anton Webern, rather than that of his teacher Arnold Schoenberg, that provided the starting point for the revolution launched by the composers of the European avant garde. Yet despite its influence, Webern’s slender output was rarely performed then, and even more rarely recorded. It did not become more widely accessible until the American conductor Robert Craft directed this series of recordings, made in Los Angeles between 1954 and 1956, using an unidentified orchestra made up, presumably, of Hollywood session musicians, and west coast-based soloists, including the soprano Marni Nixon and pianist Leonard Stein.Craft now is best remembered as Igor Stravinsky’s assistant, author of the books of their conversations and credited with encouraging the composer to adopt serial techniques in his later years. But his Webern recordings proved hugely influential; for those of us growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Craft’s LPs provided almost the only way of getting to know these jewel-like works, until in 1979 Pierre Boulez released the first of what would be his two complete surveys. Continue reading...