Post by erik on Feb 25, 2023 22:39:51 GMT -5
One the great revolutionaries of 20th century music, Arnold Schoenberg, is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight with a piece that is arguably his best known to audiences.
Schoenberg: TRANSFIGURED NIGHT, OP. 4
Next to Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg did the most to make 20th century classical music what it became. In the wake of such uber-Romantic giants as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, Schoenberg stretched the limits of tonal music to fairly hair-raising lengths. One of his best known works was a string sextet he composed in 1899 entitled “Verklate Nacht”, or “Transfigured Night”. The piece was inspired by a poem of the same name by the German writer Richard Dehmel of a man and a woman walking through a forest on a moonlit night, where the woman tells the man that she is bearing the child impregnated in her by her former lover. The deep complexity of the couple is revealed throughout the work, which finally climaxes with the man being able to forgive his lover’s transgression. In its original sextet form, “Transfigured Night” was given its premiere at the Vienna Musikverein on March 14, 1902 by the Rose Quarter, augmented by Franz Jelinek on second viola and Franz Schmidt on second cello). This version remains hugely popular among chamber ensembles despite its difficulty; but twenty-two years later, in December 1924, Edward Clark, a British student of Schoenberg’s and a champion of the composer, gave a performance of the fuller string orchestra version at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Alongside his massive oratorio “Gurrelieder”, “Transfigured Night” was to be the best known work of Schoenberg, who, in order to escape the steadily growing influence of Nazism and Fascism in his native country, moved to the United States and, like Stravinsky, settled in Los Angeles, where he was to pass away in 1951, having helped to shape modern music in the most ultra-creative ways imaginable.
New York Philharmonic Orchestra/PIERRE BOULEZ (CBS/Sony Classical)
Included):
DIE GLUKLICHE HAND (Siegmund Nimsgern) (BBC Singers) (BBC Symphony Orchestra)
VARIATIONS (New York Philharmonic Orchestra)
Schoenberg: TRANSFIGURED NIGHT, OP. 4
Next to Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg did the most to make 20th century classical music what it became. In the wake of such uber-Romantic giants as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, Schoenberg stretched the limits of tonal music to fairly hair-raising lengths. One of his best known works was a string sextet he composed in 1899 entitled “Verklate Nacht”, or “Transfigured Night”. The piece was inspired by a poem of the same name by the German writer Richard Dehmel of a man and a woman walking through a forest on a moonlit night, where the woman tells the man that she is bearing the child impregnated in her by her former lover. The deep complexity of the couple is revealed throughout the work, which finally climaxes with the man being able to forgive his lover’s transgression. In its original sextet form, “Transfigured Night” was given its premiere at the Vienna Musikverein on March 14, 1902 by the Rose Quarter, augmented by Franz Jelinek on second viola and Franz Schmidt on second cello). This version remains hugely popular among chamber ensembles despite its difficulty; but twenty-two years later, in December 1924, Edward Clark, a British student of Schoenberg’s and a champion of the composer, gave a performance of the fuller string orchestra version at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Alongside his massive oratorio “Gurrelieder”, “Transfigured Night” was to be the best known work of Schoenberg, who, in order to escape the steadily growing influence of Nazism and Fascism in his native country, moved to the United States and, like Stravinsky, settled in Los Angeles, where he was to pass away in 1951, having helped to shape modern music in the most ultra-creative ways imaginable.
New York Philharmonic Orchestra/PIERRE BOULEZ (CBS/Sony Classical)
Included):
DIE GLUKLICHE HAND (Siegmund Nimsgern) (BBC Singers) (BBC Symphony Orchestra)
VARIATIONS (New York Philharmonic Orchestra)