SCHOENBERG: Verklarte Nacht / Chamber Symphony No. 2 - Ulster Orchestra

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg began to reject tonal music, developing a new style, which was to change the course of composition. Dispensing with the fundamental concept of harmony and melody, he devised a system using all twelve notes of the octave as the ‘thematic’ basis of each work. In his younger years, however, Schoenberg produced works in the style of the Romantic era, Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night’) being an explicit picture of the illicit love we find in Wagner’s opera, Tristan und Isolde. Though image-makers have cast Schoenberg as a musical revolutionary, he did return to a form of tonal music in later life, the Chamber Symphony and the Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene proving his mastery of a post-modernism style of composition.

Tracklist

 Artist details

Schoenberg, Arnold

 Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 38

 Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, Op. 34

 Verklarte Nacht, Op. 4 (arr. for string orchestra)