back to New Releases Page
Following the release of the complete Brahms symphonies (“Altogether a marvelous achievement” – The Daily Telegraph), Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker have performed and recorded a program of orchestral works by Arnold Schoenberg, who was a great admirer of Brahms. The repertoire, recorded in concert at Berlin’s Philharmonie in late October/early November 2009, consists of Schoenberg’s orchestration of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor, Begleitungsmusik zu ein er Lichtspielszene (Accompanying Music to a Film) and the full orchestra version of the Chamber Symphony No.1.
In these three contrasting works, the spirits of Modernism, Romanticism and Classicism are invoked by Arnold Schoenberg – a revolutionary whose aesthetic roots lay firmly in tradition. Sir Simon Rattle, who first established his international reputation with masterpieces of the 20th century, explores these musical cross-currents with the Berliner Philharmoniker, long supreme in Austro-German repertoire.
