Berliner Philharmoniker  BPHR 250511

Stereo/Multichannel

Classical - Vocal

Wolfgang Koch baritone (Gabriel)
Daniel Behle tenor (The Called One)
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke tenor (The Rebellious One)
Johannes Martin Kränzle baritone (The Struggling One)
Gyula Orendt baritone (The Chosen One)
Stephan Rügamer tenor (The Monk)
Nicola Beller Carbone soprano (The Dying One)
Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs soprano (The Soul)
Rundfunkchor Berlin
Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)


Provocation! Anarchy! Scandal! All too often we encounter Arnold Schoenberg in writings as an enfant terrible, as a radical innovator who sacrificed late Romantic tonality for his highly complex system of “composition with twelve tones related only to each other”. In this edition, the Berliner Philharmoniker and chief conductor Kirill Petrenko demonstrate that in Schoenberg’s music “heart and brain” – as the composer entitled one of his essays – are in fact in balance, and that the twelve-tone technique is also entirely at the service of expression. Released in the aftermath of the 150th anniversary year of the composer’s birth, it presents five central works that illustrate all of Schoenberg’s stylistic periods.

As Schoenberg rejected repetition, his work is characterised by constant change. He sought a different expression for each subject: agitated passion characterises the lovers’ dialogue in Verklärte Nacht, sparkling humour the free-tonal Chamber Symphony. In the Variations, op. 31 – Schoenberg’s first orchestral work in twelve-tone technique, premiered by the Berliner Philharmoniker with Wilhelm Furtwängler –, each variation has its own individual character. The Violin Concerto (here with soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja), on the other hand, written in exile in America, reflects the composer’s uncertainty in the face of a foreign culture, material shortages, and a world once again on the brink of war.

Die Jakobsleiter, another key work composed around the time of the First World War, impressively depicts the confrontation between a doubter and his God. Its twelve-tone nature becomes secondary to the poignant, almost existential experience that Schoenberg achieves through the precise design of spatial sound, among other things: the positioning of the main and remote ensembles that he demanded strikingly anticipates what can only be reproduced in our recordings today using Immersive Audio (Dolby Atmos).