Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra

Arnold Schoenberg (Composer), Pierre Boulez (Conductor), Members of the Ensemble InterContemporain (Performer), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Alain Neveux (Performer), John Shirley-Quirk (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Members of the Ensemble InterContemporain, Alain Neveux, John Shirley-Quirk
• Orchestra: BBC Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Pierre Boulez
• Composer: Arnold Schoenberg
• Audio CD (July 13, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B000002818
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,692 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #46 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Vocal Non-Opera > Odes

Track Listings

1. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Marsch

2. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Menuett

3. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Variationen

4. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Sonett von Petraca: 'O könnt' ich je der Rach' an ihr genesen'

5. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Tanzscene

6. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Lied (ohne Worte)

7. Serenade for baritone & septet, Op. 24: Finale

8. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: No. 1, Premonitions

9. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: No. 2, The Past

10. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: No. 3, Chord-Colours

11. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: No. 4, Peripetie (Turning point)

12. Pieces (5) for orchestra, Op. 16: No. 5, The Obbligato Recitative

13. Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, for narrator, piano & strings, Op. 41

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Devastating Five Pieces - A desert island CD, July 15, 2005

By 

Sator (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra (Audio CD)

I still remember the first time I heard this recording of Boulez conducting the Five Pieces. I had heard the work before but the degree of electricity here was something that came as a complete shock to me. From the first note to last this Five Pieces is totally devastating. This is a performance that makes Schoenberg's Mahlerian heritage absolutely clear only he is so much more concentrated and focused in his delivery that the results for me are just shattering. The rapport that Boulez enjoyed with the BBC orchestra at this time is something I have always marvelled at but this takes it to another level. Of course the inner movements are also allowed moments of hushed poetic repose but the outer movements really do remind me of what Robert Craft said of the final pages of the last of the Five Pieces - that it was the greatest thing written in the twentieth century. That statement really surprised me and I think maybe it was a spur of the moment outburst but Boulez does a greater job than anybody of convincing me of its truth.

As for the Seranade, I love this performance. Schoenberg always had a great awareness of early music - perhaps inherited from Brahms. Webern of course even wrote his PhD thesis on Heinrich Isaac's Choralis Constantinus and in his writings Schoenberg refers to composers such as Josquin reasonably frequently. It is highly likely he was also familiar with the madrigals of the late Renaissance period, referred to the Seconda Prattica by Monteverdi. Poets such as Petrach and Tasso were popular amongst madrigal composers and the madrigalian feeling is even further accentuated by the use of instruments such as the mandolin for accompaniment making it sound even more like a twentieth century madrigal. It is a charming and enjoyable work, quirky and mercurial.

The final work on this CD is the Ode to Napolean in which Schoenberg spits vitriolic hatred at Hitler. I have always found Schoenberg's command of English language inflections to be less than perfect - you can hear a slight German accent in the Sprechstimme. Musically by this time Schoenberg starts to also sound increasingly more and more like Brahms and the opening statement by the string quartet and piano has a theme vaguely reminiscent of the opening of the finale of the Brahms Opus 25 G minor piano quartet (the one Schoenberg transcribed for orchestra)! Boulez has always been critical of this tendency in the later Schoenberg but I must confess to liking it. The work is a tour de force - fiery and passionate, yet uplifting and hugely appealling such that I am always surprised it is not played more often, especially when it pays such glowing hommage in the closing passages to George Washington.

All in all this is a desert island CD for me - most especially for the Five Pieces, which is one of the greatest performances of anything I have yet to hear.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A convert, May 9, 2006

By 

Fay Hughes - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra (Audio CD)

I would like to speak in regards to what some reviewers are saying about the works of Schoenberg. I will admit that the first time I heard Schoenberg, I wrote him off as weird music that I would never like and was not worth listening to. In my defense, the first work I heard was "Pierrot Lunaire" which is a very hard work to understand. But I was assigned a paper of the Second Viennese School and its influences for music history and was forced to really listen to these works among others by much more extreme composers like Boulez and Cage (who I have yet to understand, but I am still young!) Once I stopped grumbling about how much I hated serialism and let myself really HEAR the music, I started to understand it and gained a begrudging respect for Schoenberg, which became a genuine liking. So in light of this, I dare anyone who is so willing to bash Schoenberg outright to really listen to his works and the works of those he influenced with an open mind and see if you can't at least respect the music for what it is.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top rendition of Schönberg, December 26, 2007

By 

Frank Ettenberg (Wien, Austria) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra (Audio CD)

Arnold Schoenberg: Serenade/Five Pieces For Orchestra

Extraordinary subtlety of interpretetion characterizes this particular version. The timbre and deftness of the musicians is a pearl of great price. This composer still is terribly challenging. He provides the largest, most extensive bridge between 19th & 20th century classical music composition. The serenade takes the most aggressive leave of the former century and speeds ahead at lightspeed. As a previous review said, this composer's statements represent a concentration of Mahler's best offerings.
The poetics here can only be taken in small doses...