Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande & Verklärte Nacht

Album information

SCHOENBERG’S LATE-ROMANTIC MASTERWORKS

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its Music Director Rafael Payare celebrate Arnold Schoenberg’s 150^thbirthday with a recording of two of his late-Romantic masterworks: Verklärte Nacht and Pelleas und Melisande. Both pieces are based on stories evolving around love, jealousy, acceptance and forgiveness, and showcase Schoenberg’s expressive harmonic language and scintillating, multifarious orchestration. The album booklet features unique photography and paintings by Arnold Schoenberg, sketching a vivid picture of this extraordinarily versatile artist. After their acclaimed PENTATONE recordings of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (2023), as well as his Rückert-Lieder and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (2024), Payare and the orchestra further explore this late-Romantic repertoire that fits them like a glove.

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Released physically on standard CD.

REVIEWS:

Crescendo – Album of the Year: “Numerous recordings of these two early works by Schoenberg exist, but few can boast such coherence and sonic richness. While the entire Montreal Symphony Orchestra is magnificent, its shimmering strings, so prominently featured in these works, deserve high praise for their supple and warm sound. Furthermore, Rafael Payare’s analytical work is exceptional in more ways than one, both in its narrative approach and in its meticulous rendering of every detail of these rich and complex scores. The result is magnificent, both in its evocative power and in the imagination it conjures.”