Schoenberg & Padding

2024 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great music innovator Arnold Schoenberg. The New European Ensemble celebrates this with two of Schoenberg’s own works as well as a new composition by Martijn Padding. The title Padding chose, Ma vie en couleurs, serves as a reminder that Schoenberg was also a talented expressionist painter. The NEuE will play Henk Guittart’s ensemble arrangement of the notoriously difficult Violin Concerto, with soloist Maria Milstein, who is a regular guest at the Muziekgebouw.

In 1933, following the Nazi regime’s rise to power, Schoenberg fled to America. There, in 1936, he composed his Violin Concerto. Like much of Schoenberg’s early American work, it sounds surprisingly tonal despite utilizing his well-known twelve-tone technique, which is characterized by the absence of a tonic. One of the first works that Schoenberg constructed entirely according to a twelve-tone row was the Serenade (1921-1923). Nice fact: the Serenade also happens to be the very first piece performed by the NEuE.