MDG Scene  MDG 901 1807

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Classical - Orchestral

Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande
Berg: Drei Orchesterstucke

Dortmunder Philharmoniker
Jac van Steen


Personal Recommendation
The great Richard Strauss is said to have exclaimed to the young Arnold Schönberg, “That’s something for you!” Maurice Maeterlinck’s drama Pelléas et Mélisande does indeed hold in store a vast world for an aspiring composer to explore, especially when the young talent happens to be on his way to reshaping and retracing Wagner’s leitmotivic footsteps. On this new SACD recording charged with suspense, the Dortmund Philharmonic presents this rarely heard work together with Alban Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces op. 6.

Sumptuous Orchestration
The orchestral part is sumptuously and highly colorfully instrumented and structured contrapuntally down to the smallest detail. As a result, Schönberg’s Pelleas und Melisande captures even the remotest allusions and references of its literary source. Broadly streaming string passages symbolize Mélisande’s relation to her husband. A spirited trumpet solo presents the young hero Pelléas and then yearningly swarms around Mélisande’s seductive motif.

Prophetic Anticipation
Ten years later Arnold Schönberg, by then a highly regarded composer, served as a source of inspiration when he required his student Alban Berg finally to compose a large-format work. The resultant Three Orchestral Pieces – what a farewell song to the fin de siècle! As in a prophecy, this work seems to anticipate the brutality of the international conflagration then looming on the horizon. Arising as if ex nihilo, the music culminates in frightening hammer beats in the third piece – and this to a continuously latent march rhythm.

Suspenseful Occupation
Under its principal conductor Jac van Steen the Dortmund Philharmonic long ago secured its place in the first ranks of German orchestras. Its intensive occupation with Richard Wagner’s oeuvre was excellent preparation for this highly welcome new recording: absolutely unique, how plausibly and naturally the motivic interpretation faithful to detail and the broadly drawn line of suspense join together! Everything has been produced on MDG in the finest 2+2+2 recording technique enabling you to experience the superb acoustics of Dortmund’s Konzerthaus just as if you too were there.