Page 260 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

young composers arriving on the scene with their own unique fully-formed voice, but up until
recently there was no problem with acknowledging that Oliver Knussen was influenced by
Stravinsky, Ravel and Mussorgsky etc. Schoenberg was obviously part of a tradition, and I think
it’s good to remind people that he (and the Expressionist movement as a whole) didn’t just pitch
up out of nowhere!

How did the idea of curating the programme around Schoenberg's paintings come about?

Chris and I have tried to find some sort of arc for all our albums; both the Grieg and the
Mussorgsky were loosely structured around a woman’s life-journey, but we didn’t want to force
that narrative onto Schoenberg when it wasn’t there. We got talking about the fact that he was a
real polymath, and it was Chris who suggested that the paintings could be the way in…

All his paintings have very Expressionist titles like ‘Flesh’, ‘Tears’ and ‘Expectation’, and we
thought they were a powerful illustration of how much things had shifted since the nineteenth
century. A Victorian painting entitled ‘Expectation’ would probably show a little dog waiting for its
master with something in its mouth, whereas Schoenberg’s painting is characterised by
blackness: there’s the suggestion of a figure, a shaft of light and a pool of colour…Who is waiting,
and for what? What do I think? What did he think? It’s all a question, and it’s wonderful how these
words have ended up meaning different things in different eras.

Schoenberg: 'Erwartung'
It’s been interesting seeing the Expressionism exhibition at The Tate where they reference
Kandinsky’s friendship with Schoenberg, because all of that feeds into what we’re trying to
explore here. I was only sorry that they feature some of Schoenberg’s music but none of his
paintings…

Eventually we picked eight pictures and did a triptych of three songs around each one. There
were some glorious songs that didn’t make the cut: I was sorry not to include the Op. 8
orchestral Lieder or anything from Pierrot Lunaire, although doing that with piano only would’ve
been a headache! We did include Tove’s song from Gurre-Lieder, which Chris assures me was