Page 297 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

Arnold Schoenberg: Tears
(Image: Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles courtesy Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien)

Some of Schoenberg's lieder sound like Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler,
but then Claire points out that Schoenberg did not jump out as a fully-formed
atonal composer. He was never a maverick and his music emerges clearly
and logically from the world around him (and it has always struck me that the
converse is true also, so there are early Richard Strauss songs that approach
Schoenberg). She finds it wonderful to hear how his music can link through to
other composers. His song-writing is not just late Romantic or cabaret (notably
the Brettl-Lieder) but much else besides. She comments that the Opus 6
songs are very theatrical and remarkably diverse as he sets a range of poets.
He also arranged folksongs, and then there is the Opus 14 ballad, Jane Grey
(setting text by Heinrich Ammann about the execution of Lady Jane Grey).
There is so much to draw on.

The disc is themed on Schoenberg's paintings, with a group of songs
exploring a theme from one of the paintings - Expectation, Flesh, Nocturne,
Hatred, Satire, Thinking, Winter Scene, and Tears. Schoenberg's painting was