Transfigurations

Before Arnold Schoenberg became the great helmsman of atonal music, he already composed masterpieces in the late Romantic idiom of Wagner and Richard Strauss. The specialists of Het Collectief pay tribute to Schönberg with two of those pieces: the sextet Verklärte Nacht (1899) and the Kammersymphonie op. 9 (1906), in an arrangement by his student Anton Webern. In this adventurous programme, Het Collectief provides context for Schönberg’s music with works by two other students of his, Alban Berg and Hanns Eisler.

The Kammersymphonie, with its free tonality, inspired Berg to create his Piano Sonata op. 1, which composer Tim Mulleman arranged for Het Collectief. Hanns Eisler wrote his Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben (Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain) as the score to Joris Ivens’ short film Regen, which will also be shown this evening. Eisler dedicated the work to his teacher on his seventieth birthday. Het Collectief knows this repertoire inside out; they recently recorded the pieces by Schoenberg and Berg on the CD Transfigurations.