Thursday 12 July 2012 8:00 pm
Verklärte Nacht
Brahms: String sextet in G major, op. 36
Zemlinsky: Two movements for string quintet
Schoenberg: String sextet “Verklärte Nacht”, op. 4
Some would call Richard Dehmel’s poem, “Transfigured Night”, which served as the inspiration for Arnold Schoenberg’s piece of the same name, as pompous. The composer defended the poem, however, for its remarkable moral approach to a devastatingly difficult problem, namely that of a woman who confesses to her lover during a moonlight stroll through the park that she is carrying her husband’s child. In the end, her lover accepts the other man’s child. Their night of tragedy becomes a “transfigured night”.
Schoenberg was not the only composer to avail himself of the exuberant sounds of strings to tell the tale of a love tragedy. Brahms before him wrote his second string sextet as a therapy for his love to Agathe von Siebold and Zemlinsky’s quintet melodies pine for the beautiful Alma Schindler.
This concert will be broadcast on Radio Steiermark on July 15, 08:04 pm
