Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, was barely 18 years old when she died in April 1935 as a result of polio. Family friend Alban Berg was lost for words on her tragic death as he told Alma in a letter. “One day, you may be able to hear from a score, dedicated to the memory of an angel, what I am feeling and am today unable to express.” A few months later, he gave his feelings utterance in a two-movement violin concerto – a requiem twice over as its creator died shortly after it was completed and was unable to hear it performed on stage. While the first movement is a musical portrait of the gentle, fun-loving Manon, the subject matters of the second movement are fundamentally death and solace, sadness and hope. And although the Violin Concerto was composed in the new twelve-tone technique, Berg remained an “incorrigible romantic” in this work, as he described himself. Anton Bruckner was the same. In his monumental Fifth Symphony, he went for powerful soundscapes and arcs of tension, creating a pull that is difficult to resist