Farewell Romanticism. Goodbye Tonality

It is tempting to wonder what might have been, had Schönberg not abandoned the opulent romanticism of his early work in favour of the twelve-tone system with which he will be forever associated. In terms of music theory he would ultimately have been less influential, but his unique way with orchestral texture, dramatic gestures and large-scale constructions might nonetheless have resulted in some wonderful music. As it stands, our only window into this alternative world is Gurre-Lieder, a magnificent, unwieldy cantata with orchestral demands that eclipse even Mahler and a dense, chromatic sound-world that tests nineteenth-century romanticism to its breaking point. The Berlin Philharmonic – who, just the weekend before, had marked the fiftieth birthday of their concert hall with a semi-staged performance of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion that…