Originally released by Koch, these recordings of key works in Arnold Schoenberg's oeuvre are now part of Naxos' Robert Craft Collection, a series of reissues that reaffirms the conductor's unflagging devotion to modern music, even if the performances and recording quality periodically flag. The pieces predate Schoenberg's discovery of the twelve-tone system and are to varying degrees atonal and expressionistic, with the exception of the tonal Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1906), which was composed just before the atonal ...
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Originally released by Koch, these recordings of key works in Arnold Schoenberg's oeuvre are now part of Naxos' Robert Craft Collection, a series of reissues that reaffirms the conductor's unflagging devotion to modern music, even if the performances and recording quality periodically flag. The pieces predate Schoenberg's discovery of the twelve-tone system and are to varying degrees atonal and expressionistic, with the exception of the tonal Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1906), which was composed just before the atonal period. Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912), is Schoenberg's best-known work, famous for introducing Sprechgesang or Sprechstimme (a vocal technique in which words are half-spoken, half-sung) and for influencing numerous modernist vocal pieces since. This angst-laden cycle on "three times seven poems by Albert Giraud in German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben" is convincingly played by members of the Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, though Anja Silja's consonants are...
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