Arnold Schönberg, an influential Austrian composer, revolutionized 20th-century music through his development of the twelve-tone technique. Renowned for his bold departure from traditional harmony, Schönberg's innovations laid the groundwork for modernist musical expression, profoundly shaping contemporary composition.
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Concerts in season 2024/25 or later where works by Arnold Schönberg is performed
The Orchestre National de Lille makes a vibrant plea against the scourge of antisemitism. Evoking the victims of the past, this programme reminds us that, in the words of Bertolt Brecht, ‘the belly is still fertile from which the foul beast sprang’.
For more than six decades, the chamber concerts by musicians from the Staatskapelle have been a constant feature of the Staatsoper programme. This season, ensembles have come together to select music from different periods, styles and cultures under the theme of ‘playing together’. On eleven dates in the Apollosaal, which with its special atmosphere is an ideal venue for chamber music and communicative interaction between players and listeners, works from the Baroque to the present day will be performed in constellations that are both exciting and harmonious, in which tangible contrasts play just as important a role as a common resonance and the balancing of opposites.
For lovers of chamber music the Recital Hall is the venue of choice. You can hear the musicians breathe and you can practically touch them. This hall is also cherished by musicians for its beautiful acoustics and direct contact with the audience. In the Recital Hall you can hear the best musicians of our time. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Recital Hall for yourself!
There are few orchestras that can boast as long a Mahler tradition as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam. Even during Gustav Mahler’s lifetime, the orchestra regularly performed his symphonies and helped the composer achieve the fame he enjoys to this day. Klaus Mäkelä, who takes over as the orchestra’s chief conductor in 2027, continues this tradition with a performance of Mahler’s First Symphony. The composer wrote about his work: »It has become so overpowering – it flowed out of me like a mountain stream!« Also on the programme is Arnold Schönberg’s early work »Verklärte Nacht« for string orchestra, based on Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name. Before Schönberg climbed to the top of the avant-garde and shocked the music world with his twelve-tone music, he wrote deeply Romantic pieces in his younger years, in which he endeavoured to unite the styles of Wagner and Brahms.
Florian Illies, known for his chronicle of German sentiment, has recently captivated audiences with compilations on 1913 and love during times of hate. His latest work delves into German Romanticism, portraying Caspar David Friedrich as a painter of devout introspection on the edge of abstraction. The symphony concert "Sound of Silence" complements this, showing Friedrich wasn't alone in his artistic journey.
The fantastic Belcea Quartet celebrates its 30th anniversary with a three-day stop in Hamburg during their world tour. Known for passion, precision, expressiveness, and emotionality, they promise three world-class concerts featuring diverse music, including Schönberg's First String Quartet and Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14. A 15% discount is offered for tickets to all three concerts.
In honor of Kaija Saariaho, the leading Finnish composer of the 20th and 21st centuries who died in June 2023, Quatuor Diotima has chosen her Second String Quartet Terra Memoria as the centerpiece of its program. Written in 2006, the work is dedicated “to those departed” and their memory. The four musicians also perform music by Benjamin Britten and Arnold Schoenberg.
Remarkable leaps and bounds for the chamber music playing that our orchestra members love: Borodin was actually a full-time chemist and physician, but his passion for music constantly rekindled, including from 1859 in Heidelberg – where he composed his romantic string sextet in D minor. Some time later, he returned to Russia and the work was lost. It did not turn up for almost 100 years until it was finally discovered in an antiquarian bookshop. And it may still be missing something, as it consists of just two movements – one of which seems to shimmer like Mendelssohn’s »Midsummer Night’s Dream« and the other is laced with folk songs from Borodin's homeland. Dvořák’s sextet, premiered in 1879, also bubbles along folkloristically, which has to do with its chronological proximity to his famous »Slavonic Dances« and emphasises his image as a »Bohemian musician«. Although this was only one aspect of his multifaceted personality, Dvořák loved the cheerful and colourful environment around him, where people liked to celebrate festivals. His work quickly became one of the classics of the genre – and also inspired Schönberg to write his string sextet »Verklärte Nacht« in 1899. It is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, saying: »There is a glow around everything, you drift with me across a cold sea, but a warmth of your own flickers from you into me, from me into you.« Schönberg found a poetic voice here that reflected his aesthetic stance – and an impressive love story that defied the moral standards of the time. He created a late romantic musical world for this – and the composition is one of his most popular pieces of chamber music today.
Beethoven's five late string quartets are a listening adventure like no other. One of the most performed and beloved is No. 14, with opus number 131. Here, it seems as if Beethoven is searching for the freedom of thought and soul through his music. Perhaps that's also why this music speaks so strongly to us, with its warmth, imagination, and intensity, transcending all historical barriers. And the slow, dense first movement is among the most beautiful ever created for a string quartet.The Belcea Quartet is one of the world's most prominent string quartets. The quartet has performed at Konserthuset Stockholm on several occasions previously, including in a series of concerts featuring all of Beethoven's string quartets.Here, instead, the quartet combines Beethoven with Arnold Schönberg, whom many associate with twelve-tone music. But Schönberg was a great romantic, and the string quartet we hear here, the first of four numbered ones, was his first truly major composition. It is music brimming with wild energy and swelling late romanticism, composed in 1905 in Vienna, a city that had a significant influence on Schönberg with its vibrant art scene and Freud's psychological investigations.
In an extraordinary and highly personal program, mezzosoprano Fleur Barron and pianist Kunal Lahiry explore the echoes of global colonial history in music and poetry. Artists who share dual Asian and Western heritages, they examine diverse perspectives of identity and belonging, repression and freedom, in both familiar and lesserknown works from the past 150 years.
Musicians of the Concertgebouw Orchestra perform their own programmes in the Recital Hall as part of the Close-up chamber music series. Each of these concerts is unique and performed only once as part of the series. It’s the very best way to experience the individual qualities of the orchestral musicians! These intimate concerts are organised by the Friends of the Concertgebouw and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
For four days, the Recital Hall is dedicated to Mahler's most beautiful songs. A special recital is dedicated to his wife Alma, combining pieces by her with those by friends. Perhaps today's most important Lieder accompanist, pianist Julius Drake, flanks his favourite vocalists during all these concerts. Today you will hear French soprano Axelle Fanyo, a 'true storyteller' according to Forum Opéra. She shares the stage with one of the greatest Dutch talents, baritone Raoul Steffani.Austrian Alma Maria Schindler was introduced to her future husband, Gustav Mahler, by her composition teacher Zemlinsky. Under Mahler's name, she would become known - but never primarily as a composer. Mahler did not want his wife to write any more music, and Alma herself also had doubts about her work. Although most of it has been lost, her late-romantic, often melancholic songs are still widely performed. Here today in the Recital Hall, they alternate with pieces by friends and acquaintances. Axelle Fanyo and Raoul Steffani perform songs by Ernst Krenek, Mahler's son-in-law. You will also hear works by Berg, Korngold and Stravinsky.
Mitsuko Uchida is the grande dame of the piano – and one of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s close artistic companions. Her elegant, gripping and sensitive playing makes her an ideal interpreter of the piano works of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. In the final concert of our piano series, we will hear her perform Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E minor, which journeys between contemplative calm and passionate forward momentum, as well as Schubert's last sonata - a work full of intense emotions: sometimes rapturous and reflective, sometimes comforting; and at times, offering a terrifying glimpse into a psychological abyss. Arnold Schönberg and György Kurtág contribute poetic miniatures from the 20th and 21st centuries.
As a child, Mitsuko Uchida left her native Japan for Austria, entering a new world. Trained in Vienna, she became a world-class pianist, her enthusiasm for Viennese music enduring to this day. Uchida approaches great piano works with enduring sensitivity. "Today, I'm perhaps braver, but differently than in my early years." With her 'Viennese blood,' she unlocks the secrets of this music, particularly Schubert and Beethoven's sonatas.
World class – as she has been for decades: known for her technical perfection and deep musical intuition, Mitsuko Uchida is one of the greatest pianists of our time. The grand dame of the piano now returns to the Elbphilharmonie with a moving solo programme. Incidentally, she was not only involved in the selection of the Elbphilharmonie’s numerous concert grands, but also gave the first piano recital ever in the Grand Hall after the opening in 2017. The programme features Beethoven and Schubert, two composers with whom the Grammy award-winning musician has made a name for herself around the world. Beethoven’s famous Sonata Op. 90 is captivating for its great musical contrasts: while a restless motion carries through the passionate first movement, the lyrical second movement, with its song-like beauty in parts, is already headed distinctly in the direction of Schubert. Mitsuko Uchida then brings one of the most important piano works ever to the stage, namely his final piano sonata. In this deeply inward-looking and touching music, the romantic composer seems to leave space and time behind him – in ways rapturous and melancholic, dramatic and comforting all at the same time. Repertoire classics in a top line-up – making this a piano recital straight off the wish list.
In 1903, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg first met in Vienna, starting a collegial friendship. The program of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin features these pioneers of modernism alongside Unsuk Chin's concert suite from her opera "Alice in Wonderland." Schönberg's groundbreaking Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1935 orchestral version) and Mahler's lighthearted Symphony No. 4, with its final song based on the Bavarian children's song "Der Himmel hängt voll Geigen," are performed. Chin's "Alice" suite, "Puzzles and Games," a surreal music theatre scene for voice and orchestra, which premiered successfully at the 2017 ACHT BRÜCKEN festival, is also featured.
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