David Harbin asked about recommendations of the Berg Violin Concerto.
For what it's worth, I think highly of Anna-Sophie Mutter's recording of
this work with James Levine on Polygram Records.  Then again, my opinion
may not be worth much, since it's the only recording I've heard (other
than on radio).  So I'll turn to my personal arbiter of such matters:
Jim Svejda's book, "The Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings".  Svejda
cites two recordings, and I will quote from his sixth edition:

   "The small Massachusetts-based company GM Recordings, a labor of
   love of the American composer Sunther Schuller, has released two
   live Kasner [Note: violinist Louis Kasner commissioned the work]
   performances of those two extraordinay works that he helped create.
   Although the perfomances themselves are less than perfect, and the
   recorded sound is of the early-'30s and late-'50s air check variety,
   the living history it represents makes the recording an absolute
   necessity for anyone interested in the music of the twentieth century.

   Among modern recordings of the Concerto, none underscores its
   essentially Reomantic nature more tellingly than Itzhak Perlan's
   sumptuous Deutsche Grammophon recording, reissed as part of DG's 'The
   Originals' series.  Perlman beings a Brahmsian grandeur and romance
   to Berg's great score, while never ignoring its almost impressionistic
   delicacy and shattering violence.  Ozawa and the Boston Symphony are
   alert and sympathic accomplices, while the remastered analogue sound
   remains superb."

By the way, the violin concerto was written, according to Berg, to "the
memory of an Angel", namely Alma's daughter Manon Gropius, Alma's only
child, I think, by her marriage to the architect Walter Gropius.  Manon
died at age 18.  As it was completed only weeks before Berg's predictable
death, it can also be regarded as Berg's own Requiem, according to Svedja.

Does anyone know if Alma was Jewish? If so, was she observant? She married
two prominent Jewish men, Mahler and Franz Werfel, but her maiden name,
Schindler, suggests to me she was not.  I would have guessed that such
marriages would have been unusual for a lady of a prominent Viennese family
of the day, but perhaps it's not suprising from a "zaftig shiksa" like
Alma.

Larry