Arnold Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht op.4 für Klaviertrio on CD

This is the second disc in a triptych of chamber music by the composers of the Second Vienna School: Schoenberg and his students Webern and Berg. The first disc – BIS-CD-1407 – featured Schoenberg’s complete music for violin and piano in committed performances by Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen. These two now return, and are joined by Torleif Thedéen on the cello, in a less usual trio arrangement of Verklärte Nacht, made by Schönberg’s student Eduard Steuermann, as well as an arrangement by the composer’s son-in-law Felix Greissle of Sonnet No. 217 by Petrarch, the fourth movement of the Serenade, Op. 24.

These two works frame a programme of works by Webern for piano solo, cello and piano and violin and piano, spanning from the tonal Two Pieces for cello and piano (written in 1899, before Webern had come into contact with Schönberg), to the 1936 Variations for piano, composed for the above-mentioned Eduard Steuermann. This disc then offers, in the shape of a highly varied programme, an opportunity to discover how the shift was made from high romanticism to modernism during some four decades in Vienna. The three musicians guiding us have worked together, live and on recordings, for more than 20 years, and are represented on a large number of BIS releases.

Rezensionen

"Rundum begeisternd. Hört man den Beginn der Verklärten Nacht in der selten aufgeführten Bearbeitung von Eduard Steuermann für Klaviertrio dermaßen spannungsvoll und innig musiziert wie hier von Wallin, Thedéen und Pöntinen, dann vergißt man beinahe die Originalfassungen." Klassik Heute. com