“Unanswered Questions” – musical Modernism between 1910 and 1920
- free
Charles Ives
The Unanswered Question (5 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
- free
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 10 (performing version by Deryck Cooke): Adagio (29 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Claudio Abbado
- free
Arnold Schoenberg
Pierrot lunaire, op. 21, 1st Part (14 min.)Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker
Patricia Kopatchinskaja speaker, Egor Egorkin flute, Manfred Preis clarinet, Krzysztof Polonek violin, Naoko Shimizu viola, Ludwig Quandt cello, Tamara Stefanovich piano
- free
Igor Stravinsky
Le Sacre du printemps (revised 1947 version) (40 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
- free
Claude Debussy
Jeux, Poème dansé (20 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
- free
Alban Berg
Three Pieces for orchestra, op. 6 (28 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Daniele Gatti
- free
Béla Bartók
Bluebeard’s Castle, Sz 48 (concert performance) (68 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
Rinat Shaham Mezzo-Soprano, Gábor Bretz Bass, Ulrich Noethen Speaker
- free
Arnold Schoenberg
Pierrot lunaire, op. 21, 2nd Part (12 min.)Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker
Patricia Kopatchinskaja speaker, Egor Egorkin flute, Manfred Preis clarinet, Krzysztof Polonek violin, Naoko Shimizu viola, Ludwig Quandt cello, Tamara Stefanovich piano
- free
Maurice Ravel
La Valse, Poème chorégraphique for orchestra (15 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
François-Xavier Roth
- free
Ferruccio Busoni
Tanz-Walzer for orchestra, op. 53 (13 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Susanna Mälkki
- free
Rudi Stephan
Music for Orchestra (17 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko
- free
Alexander Scriabin
Prométhée – Le Poème du feu, op. 60 (19 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Claudio Abbado
Martha Argerich piano, Berliner Singakademie, Achim Zimmermann chorus master
- free
Leoš Janáček
Taras Bulba, Rhapsody for Orchestra (31 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Jakub Hrůša
- free
Arnold Schoenberg
Pierrot lunaire, op. 21, 3rd Part (18 min.)Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker
Patricia Kopatchinskaja speaker, Egor Egorkin flute, Manfred Preis clarinet, Krzysztof Polonek violin, Naoko Shimizu viola, Ludwig Quandt cello, Tamara Stefanovich piano
- free
Claude Debussy
Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (18 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
- free
Edgard Varèse
Amériques (1st Version from 1918−1922, revised 1997) (28 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Peter Eötvös
The period between 1910 and 1920 can be counted as a particularly productive period in recent music history. Although most of the composers presented here were rather apolitical, their works also reacted to the historical upheavals of the time. For example, in Ravel’s La Valse, first performed in 1920, the aftermath of the shock caused by the First World War cannot be ignored. A direct victim was the composer Rudi Stephan, who died at the age of 28; Kirill Petrenko highlighted the significance of his work in 2012.
Debussy, Scriabin and Mahler who also died in the decade mentioned above, advanced into new spheres of expression in their farewell works: the adagio of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, which remains a fragment, contains a chord in which nine notes of the chromatic scale are heard simultaneously. In Jeux, Debussy achieved a maximum of freedom in terms of its form, orchestration and harmonic technique. Finally, in Prométhée – Le Poème du feu, Scriabin used a piano whose purpose was to produce colours rather than sounds. For other composers, the 1910s were a time of new beginnings: Schoenberg and his students provoked the audience with compositions whose “free atonality” emancipated them from the basics of familiar harmonies, and the proverbial “thunderbolt” would be a far too harmless metaphor for the shock that Stravinsky’s ballet music Le Sacre du printemps caused at its premiere in 1913. Finally, Béla Bartók, one of the most important and forthright composers of the era, completed his only opera Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911.
The great Modernist composers often regarded each other as competitors. However, with Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire there was a work that intrigued many composers: Ravel praised the combination of “Romanticism” and “sobriety”, Stravinsky described the instrumentation as “perfect”, and Edgard Varèse drew Debussy’s attention to the piece he admired. Schoenberg’s mysterious and expressive Sprechgesang in three parts therefore form the leitmotif of this selection.
With Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question and Varèse’s Amériques – as prologue and epilogue – the playlist also presents two compositions written shortly before and after this exciting decade. Ives was undoubtedly one of the early authentic voices of American music; Varèse moved from Europe to the USA at the time of his first major composition. And the emigrants Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartók also found their last home there.