Berliner Philharmoniker * Schoenberg (3cd+1bd) [New CD]

Provocation! Anarchy! Scandal! All too often we encounter Arnold Schoenberg in writings as an enfant terrible, as a radical innovator who sacrificed late Romantic tonality for his highly complex system of "composition with twelve tones related only to each other". In this edition, the Berliner Philharmoniker and chief conductor Kirill Petrenko demonstrate that in Schoenberg's music "heart and brain" - as the composer entitled one of his essays - are in fact in balance, and that the twelve-tone technique is also entirely at the service of expression. Released in the aftermath of the 150th anniversary year of the composer's birth, it presents five central works that illustrate all of Schoenberg's stylistic periods.