Schoenberg's Sheen

[Cato]

I knew someone would say that! It's a lot of music at the same tempo if you don't hear the difference.

I'm really enjoying revisiting the last two quartets. How could anyone not love this music? It's full of gorgeous tunes and foot tapping rhythms.

The Second Movement Comodo ("Comfortable") shows a dotted half-note at 54, while the First Movement (Allegro molto, Energico) shows a quarter note at 152!

So yes, one should hear a "significant" difference in speed!

If the speed were supposed to be the same, one would see an indication of it in Schoenberg's score.

[Mandryka]

Gringolts Quartet seem to me to be very attuned to the differences in the characters of each movement of the 4th quartet. I'm liking what they do more and more.

Isn't it extraordinary how serial music, which felt so confusing to me at first, can become so natural and expressive and pleasing.

[Luke]

The Second Movement Comodo ("Comfortable") shows a dotted half-note at 54, while the First Movement (Allegro molto, Energico) shows a quarter note at 152!

So yes, one should hear a "significant" difference in speed!

If the speed were supposed to be the same, one would see an indication of it in Schoenberg's score.

This is true, but at dotted half = 54, quarter = 162, which isn't wildly different from the 152 of the first movement. Also, the first movement, though in 4, ends with some metrical ambiguity (suggestive of groupings of quarters in 3s) whilst the Commodo, though in 3, begins with quarters phrased in pairs. The top line at the end of the first movement is a repeated C#; the top line at the beginning of the second is a repeated descent from Db. So there are a number of ways in which this transition between movements functions through similarities.

[brewski]

What do people think of the Pittman-Jennings/Boulez Moses und Aron? I was thinking of listening to that recording whenever I'm done with Wagner.



Oh 4d audio... guess it includes smell!

Definitely another thumbs-up, though I haven't heard it in a very long time — nor the Solti, which is the only other recording I know. (A casual browse shows many more versions than I expected, which was a delightful surprise.)

-Bruce

[Cato]

Definitely another thumbs-up, though I haven't heard it in a very long time — nor the Solti, which is the only other recording I know. (A casual browse shows many more versions than I expected, which was a delightful surprise.)

-Bruce

Check out a 1970's performance with Michael Gielen conducting!

https://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Moses-Aron-Arnold/dp/B001RIGDHI

[brewski]

Check out a 1970's performance with Michael Gielen conducting!

https://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Moses-Aron-Arnold/dp/B001RIGDHI

Thank you! I did notice that among the many versions I've not heard, and am positively inclined toward Gielen.

-Bruce

[Le Buisson Ardent]

Considering it's Arnie's anniversary year, the response to such in terms of new CDs and anniversary box sets has been abysmal to say the least. A shame as I think of him as one of the greats of the 20th Century. He really turned the classical tradition on its nose with his uncompromising, but seriously alluring music.

[Le Buisson Ardent]

Gringolts Quartet seem to me to be very attuned to the differences in the characters of each movement of the 4th quartet. I'm liking what they do more and more.

Isn't it extraordinary how serial music, which felt so confusing to me at first, can become so natural and expressive and pleasing.

Yeah, I really have enjoyed those Gringolts performances on BIS. But, to be even more frank, I haven't heard a bad recording from them. Ilya Gringolts, in my mind, is one of the great under-appreciated violinists of his generation.

[Le Buisson Ardent]

A few months ago I listened to Arnie's Pelleas und Melisande for the first time, actually (the BPO/Karajan recording). The rather "murky" opening didn't really capture my attention, but after that I was intrigued by the contrasts between sensual lyrical episodes and really dramatic, almost disturbing climaxes. One can really feel tonality being stretched to its limits at times throughout the work!

Excellent, Kyle! I hope this leads you to the Five Pieces for Orchestra, which I've professed my love for far too many times to mention. Also, I think his more 12-tone works could have a special hold on you if you allow yourself to be open to this listening experience. Since you're an orchestral/chamber kind of guy, besides the Five Pieces for Orchestra, I highly recommend the Variations for Orchestra, Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto and all four SQs. But if you're up to some vocal works, then Erwartung is a piece that must be experienced in all its glory --- Pierrot Lunaire and Survivor from Warsaw as well.

[Cato]

News from DGG about new Schoenberg recordings of the orchestral works:

https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dnso/dnso-fabio-luisi-complete-schoenberg-2720?utm_source=multiple+sources&utm_medium=multiple+mediums&utm_campaign=DNSO+Schoenberg+Complete+generic

[Karl Henning]

News from DGG about new Schoenberg recordings of the orchestral works:

https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dnso/dnso-fabio-luisi-complete-schoenberg-2720?utm_source=multiple+sources&utm_medium=multiple+mediums&utm_campaign=DNSO+Schoenberg+Complete+generic

Fabio Luisi! Excellent!

[Le Buisson Ardent]

News from DGG about new Schoenberg recordings of the orchestral works:

https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dnso/dnso-fabio-luisi-complete-schoenberg-2720?utm_source=multiple+sources&utm_medium=multiple+mediums&utm_campaign=DNSO+Schoenberg+Complete+generic

ATTN: @Lisztianwagner

Oh wow!!! This should be absolutely fabulous! Luisi is such an outstanding conductor. I love his Nielsen, R. Strauss and Schmidt recordings for example. Just the idea of a Schoenberg project of this kind of magnitude is hugely exciting for me.

Love reading this description:

Schoenberg 150 – DG Launches Complete Orchestral Edition with the DNSO and Fabio Luisi
08/29/2024

Working with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor,
DG is to release the most comprehensive survey ever of Schoenberg's music for orchestra

The new complete edition will present over 30 works, including Pelleas und Melisande, Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2, Gurre-Lieder, the Violin & Piano Concertos, and many more

The first release will be Verklärte Nacht, issued digitally on
the composer's 150th birthday, 13 September 2024

"Art belongs to the unconscious! One must express oneself! Express oneself directly!
Not one's ... acquired characteristics, but that which is inborn, instinctive"
Arnold Schoenberg, writing to Kandinsky in 1911

The visionary composer, theorist, teacher and artist Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was a pivotal figure in 20th-century music, as controversial as he was influential. To mark this year's 150th anniversary of the birth of the father of musical modernism, Deutsche Grammophon announces plans to record the most comprehensive edition of his works for and with orchestra ever produced. This will be achieved in partnership with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor Fabio Luisi. Projected to encompass over 10 hours of music, the edition will be issued as a series of albums between now and the end of the decade. The first of these presents Schoenberg's ravishingly beautiful tone-poem Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night"; 1943 version). The album will be released digitally on the composer's birthday, 13 September 2024, and will feature cover artwork based on one of Schoenberg's own paintings, as will all future albums in the series.

"In any discussion of music's great revolutionaries, the name of Arnold Schoenberg has to be one of the first to come up," says Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon. "And nowhere is the scale of his ambition and innovation more strikingly demonstrated than in his works for and with orchestra. These range in style from the late Romanticism of his youth to free atonality and serialism, not forgetting the tributes he paid to earlier musical innovators through his inspired transcriptions. We at DG were keen to explore this universe in its entirety for the first time through high-quality recordings made with the equally enthusiastic DNSO and Fabio Luisi. We're delighted to be continuing our highly successful partnership with the orchestra and its Chief Conductor in the realm of 20th-century music, building on our award-winning Nielsen symphony cycle and on our forthcoming recordings of the complete Scriabin orchestral works."

"Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most profoundly original artists in the history of music," confirms Fabio Luisi. "His music is both historically crucial, deeply personal and yet universal. Throughout his life, Schoenberg was on a continuous journey, both literally, personally and figuratively. In an artistic and intellectual sense, he moved from Brahmsian and Wagnerian ideals towards recognizing the limits of tonality, inspired by the artistic movements of his time (as well as the earliest film music). Only by seeing him as an artist and a human in constant motion can we understand his unique development, including his late return to the world of tonality, which I believe was never interrupted after allI am incredibly pleased to embark on this important recording cycle which has been a dream for many years, unveiling the beauty and the importance of Schoenberg's music to a greater audience together with Deutsche Grammophon and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra."

As part of his attempt to capture the unconscious in music, Schoenberg reinvented the traditional limits of tonality, spearheading a new era in composition through his work and his teaching. His music is still however sometimes assumed to be mathematically based, ascetic and lacking in emotional appeal. DG's new complete edition will dispel such myths, offering a true reflection of the exploratory but varied approach taken by the largely self-taught and hugely versatile composer throughout his career. It will cover the full range of Schoenberg's writing for orchestral forces, including works for chorus/solo voice and orchestra, and arrangements of scores by other composers.   

Among the more than 30 works that will make up the edition are the oratorios Gurre-Lieder and Die Jakobsleiter, as well as Kol Nidre and A Survivor from Warsaw, both for speaker, chorus and orchestra; orchestrations of music by Bach, Handel, Monn and Brahms; the orchestral Lieder, Opp. 8 and 22; and pure orchestral works as varied as the early Notturno for harp and strings and Serenade for small orchestra, Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1906), and the Violin and Piano Concertos (1936/1942).

The first work to be released, Verklärte Nacht, began life in 1899 as a string sextet inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel. Schoenberg arranged the sextet for chamber orchestra in 1917, reworking it for a much larger string ensemble in 1943, by which time he was living in the United States. While knowledge of the poem is unnecessary to enjoyment of the score, the glorious music captures the gradual transfiguration that occurs in the text, as the power of love transfigures a nocturnal conversation between two lovers into a tale of redemption and hope rather than one of potential tragedy. This is a work that looks both back to Brahms and Wagner and, by pushing at tonal boundaries, ahead to the techniques with which Schoenberg would revolutionise western music.

Summing up the aims of the Schoenberg project, Kim Bohr, CEO of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, says: "It is with great pleasure that we announce this large-scale collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon, hoping to bring out new colours and dimensions in Schoenberg's orchestral music together with our dedicated Chief Conductor Fabio Luisi. We believe that the time and occasion are ideal to present the first complete recorded cycle of Schoenberg's orchestral works, and we are convinced that the music has immense potential to reach new audiences, both in concert halls and in recordings and broadcast worldwide."

----------------------------------------------------

I'll probably wait until a box set comes out and I know this could be quite some time, but if it will only be available through digital downloads, then I'll have to bite bullet and buy all of the releases. Anyway, this is fantastic news and thanks for sharing it with us, @Cato.

[Cato]

ATTN: @Lisztianwagner

Oh wow!!! This should be absolutely fabulous! Luisi is such an outstanding conductor. I love his Nielsen, R. Strauss and Schmidt recordings for example. Just the idea of a Schoenberg project of this kind of magnitude is hugely exciting for me.
----------------------------------------------------

I'll probably wait until a box set comes out and I know this could be quite some time, but if it will only be available through digital downloads, then I'll have to bite bullet and buy all of the releases. Anyway, this is fantastic news and thanks for sharing it with us, @Cato.

You are quite welcome!

There must still be hope for Western Civilization! 

[DavidW]

News from DGG about new Schoenberg recordings of the orchestral works:

https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dnso/dnso-fabio-luisi-complete-schoenberg-2720?utm_source=multiple+sources&utm_medium=multiple+mediums&utm_campaign=DNSO+Schoenberg+Complete+generic

Just know that if you're CD only, you'll miss out. I've only listened to Luisi's Nielsen sets by virtue of streaming and downloads. I don't think DGG does physical releases anymore.

[JBS]

Just know that if you're CD only, you'll miss out. I've only listened to Luisi's Nielsen sets by virtue of streaming and downloads. I don't think DGG does physical releases anymore.

The Verklarte Nacht is digital only, but DGG still has physical media. These three are all fairly recent, and all on CD.


IIRC Luisi's Nielsen symphonies were issued on CD but the concertos only digitally.

[Le Buisson Ardent]

Just know that if you're CD only, you'll miss out. I've only listened to Luisi's Nielsen sets by virtue of streaming and downloads. I don't think DGG does physical releases anymore.

DG does indeed still issue CDs as @JBS pointed out. Also, the Luisi set of the Nielsen symphonies was issued on CD, but the recording with the concerti was never issued, which I find odd.

[Le Buisson Ardent]

You are quite welcome!

There must still be hope for Western Civilization! 

Yes indeed!

[Lisztianwagner]

ATTN: @Lisztianwagner

Oh wow!!! This should be absolutely fabulous! Luisi is such an outstanding conductor. I love his Nielsen, R. Strauss and Schmidt recordings for example. Just the idea of a Schoenberg project of this kind of magnitude is hugely exciting for me.

Love reading this description:

Schoenberg 150 – DG Launches Complete Orchestral Edition with the DNSO and Fabio Luisi
08/29/2024

Working with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor,
DG is to release the most comprehensive survey ever of Schoenberg's music for orchestra

The new complete edition will present over 30 works, including Pelleas und Melisande, Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2, Gurre-Lieder, the Violin & Piano Concertos, and many more

The first release will be Verklärte Nacht, issued digitally on
the composer's 150th birthday, 13 September 2024

"Art belongs to the unconscious! One must express oneself! Express oneself directly!
Not one's ... acquired characteristics, but that which is inborn, instinctive"
Arnold Schoenberg, writing to Kandinsky in 1911

The visionary composer, theorist, teacher and artist Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was a pivotal figure in 20th-century music, as controversial as he was influential. To mark this year's 150th anniversary of the birth of the father of musical modernism, Deutsche Grammophon announces plans to record the most comprehensive edition of his works for and with orchestra ever produced. This will be achieved in partnership with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor Fabio Luisi. Projected to encompass over 10 hours of music, the edition will be issued as a series of albums between now and the end of the decade. The first of these presents Schoenberg's ravishingly beautiful tone-poem Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night"; 1943 version). The album will be released digitally on the composer's birthday, 13 September 2024, and will feature cover artwork based on one of Schoenberg's own paintings, as will all future albums in the series.

"In any discussion of music's great revolutionaries, the name of Arnold Schoenberg has to be one of the first to come up," says Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon. "And nowhere is the scale of his ambition and innovation more strikingly demonstrated than in his works for and with orchestra. These range in style from the late Romanticism of his youth to free atonality and serialism, not forgetting the tributes he paid to earlier musical innovators through his inspired transcriptions. We at DG were keen to explore this universe in its entirety for the first time through high-quality recordings made with the equally enthusiastic DNSO and Fabio Luisi. We're delighted to be continuing our highly successful partnership with the orchestra and its Chief Conductor in the realm of 20th-century music, building on our award-winning Nielsen symphony cycle and on our forthcoming recordings of the complete Scriabin orchestral works."

"Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most profoundly original artists in the history of music," confirms Fabio Luisi. "His music is both historically crucial, deeply personal and yet universal. Throughout his life, Schoenberg was on a continuous journey, both literally, personally and figuratively. In an artistic and intellectual sense, he moved from Brahmsian and Wagnerian ideals towards recognizing the limits of tonality, inspired by the artistic movements of his time (as well as the earliest film music). Only by seeing him as an artist and a human in constant motion can we understand his unique development, including his late return to the world of tonality, which I believe was never interrupted after allI am incredibly pleased to embark on this important recording cycle which has been a dream for many years, unveiling the beauty and the importance of Schoenberg's music to a greater audience together with Deutsche Grammophon and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra."

As part of his attempt to capture the unconscious in music, Schoenberg reinvented the traditional limits of tonality, spearheading a new era in composition through his work and his teaching. His music is still however sometimes assumed to be mathematically based, ascetic and lacking in emotional appeal. DG's new complete edition will dispel such myths, offering a true reflection of the exploratory but varied approach taken by the largely self-taught and hugely versatile composer throughout his career. It will cover the full range of Schoenberg's writing for orchestral forces, including works for chorus/solo voice and orchestra, and arrangements of scores by other composers. 

Among the more than 30 works that will make up the edition are the oratorios Gurre-Lieder and Die Jakobsleiter, as well as Kol Nidre and A Survivor from Warsaw, both for speaker, chorus and orchestra; orchestrations of music by Bach, Handel, Monn and Brahms; the orchestral Lieder, Opp. 8 and 22; and pure orchestral works as varied as the early Notturno for harp and strings and Serenade for small orchestra, Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1906), and the Violin and Piano Concertos (1936/1942).

The first work to be released, Verklärte Nacht, began life in 1899 as a string sextet inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel. Schoenberg arranged the sextet for chamber orchestra in 1917, reworking it for a much larger string ensemble in 1943, by which time he was living in the United States. While knowledge of the poem is unnecessary to enjoyment of the score, the glorious music captures the gradual transfiguration that occurs in the text, as the power of love transfigures a nocturnal conversation between two lovers into a tale of redemption and hope rather than one of potential tragedy. This is a work that looks both back to Brahms and Wagner and, by pushing at tonal boundaries, ahead to the techniques with which Schoenberg would revolutionise western music.

Summing up the aims of the Schoenberg project, Kim Bohr, CEO of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, says: "It is with great pleasure that we announce this large-scale collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon, hoping to bring out new colours and dimensions in Schoenberg's orchestral music together with our dedicated Chief Conductor Fabio Luisi. We believe that the time and occasion are ideal to present the first complete recorded cycle of Schoenberg's orchestral works, and we are convinced that the music has immense potential to reach new audiences, both in concert halls and in recordings and broadcast worldwide."

----------------------------------------------------

I'll probably wait until a box set comes out and I know this could be quite some time, but if it will only be available through digital downloads, then I'll have to bite bullet and buy all of the releases. Anyway, this is fantastic news and thanks for sharing it with us, @Cato.

It's about time, such wonderful news!! Luisi and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra did an excellent job with Nielsen's symphonies, I'm looking forward for these new Schönberg recordings!

[DavidW]

The Verklarte Nacht is digital only, but DGG still has physical media. These three are all fairly recent, and all on CD.

That might actually be worse because it is not consistent. Will these future recordings have CD releases? Who knows!? It is apparently a lottery.

[Le Buisson Ardent]

It's about time, such wonderful news!! Luisi and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra did an excellent job with Nielsen's symphonies, I'm looking forward for these new Schönberg recordings!

I truly have high hopes for this project. Luisi isn't a stranger to Austro-Germanic repertoire and this seems to be his strong suit. Definitely looking forward to hearing what he does with this music.