American conductor Jeffrey Means (Berklee College of Music) leads ANAM musicians in a pre-show talk and performance tracing the musical world of Alban Berg — a composer who stood between centuries, traditions and ideas.

The concert program begins with Berg’s Seven Early Songs, a work written in his twenties and steeped in the lush sound world of Mahler and Strauss. The Piano Sonata, op. 1 follows — a compact, restless work that already hints at the intensity and precision of his later style. Berg’s arrangement of Johann Strauss II’s waltz Wein, Weib und Gesäng peels back the glitter of old Vienna to reveal something stranger and more intimate beneath.

The concert closes with the Kammerkonzert, op. 8, written for his mentors Schoenberg and Webern. In its intricate textures and fierce lyricism lies the “alchemy” of Berg’s art: the turning of emotion into form, and form back into emotion.