Kirill Petrenko conducts Arnold Schoenberg

Provocative! Anarchic! Scandalous! Arnold Schoenberg is all too often portrayed in the literature as an unscrupulous innovator who sacrificed late Romantic tonality on the altar of his system of “composition with twelve tones related only to one another”. In this edition, the Berliner Philharmoniker and chief conductor Kirill Petrenko demonstrate that in his music, “heart and mind” – as he titled an essay – are in perfect balance, and that the twelve-tone technique is also at the service of expression. Through five key works, they shed light on every stage of Schoenberg’s stylistic development.