Vienna – From Mozart to Schoenberg (13CD Box Set)

Vienna, old and new, meet on this journey from Mozart to Schoenberg and then on to Berg, Weill, Gerhard and Ligeti with David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta. Central to this anthology is the pioneering set of music by Schoenberg recorded in 1973–74 critically acclaimed for its "big line and attention to detail" (Stereo Review) and for the "mellow but well-detailed recording" (Gramophone).

The London Sinfonietta is renowned across the world as one of the most adventurous groups commissioning and performing new music. From its inception, however, the Sinfonietta played the classics alongside new and avant-garde pieces, and this new Eloquence set traces the engagement of the group with the Viennese tradition. 

At the centre of the set is the 5-LP survey of Schoenberg’s chamber music – from the early and Wagnerian "Verklärte Nacht" to the late "Phantasy" for violin and piano – which the Sinfonietta recorded in 1973-4 to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth. The recordings were bedded in by extensive performing experience, in a comprehensive concert series celebrating the music of Schoenberg and his Catalan student, Roberto Gerhard.

The Sinfonietta’s co-founder David Atherton had come to know Gerhard at Cambridge, and so these recordings bear the stamp of authority, as well as thorough preparation. In a new interview for the set with note-writer Peter Quantrill, Atherton explains the genesis of the Sinfonietta as formed around the unique instrumentation of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. He and his colleagues shook up the London concert scene in the 1970s with their energy and commitment to modernist classics and living composers.

However, the Sinfonietta brought the same incisive musicianship to Mozart’s wind serenades and Schubert’s sacred music, as these Argo recordings testify. A further rarity is the album of clarinet concertos by Louis Spohr, with the ensemble’s long-standing clarinettist, Antony Pay, as soloist. 

Recorded after a complete Stravinsky concert series, their version of Agon has long been recognised as a definitive account. The Gerhard album preserves all three of the composer’s late and exquisite Zodiac pieces, "Gemini, Libra and Leo", the last two named after the zodiacal signs of Gerhard and his wife. 

The set also includes the 3-LP Weill set that Atherton and the Sinfonietta recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in 1975, and concludes with the Ligeti album recorded that same year by the ensemble for Decca’s 20th-century HEAD series with soloists Aurèle Nicolet (flute) and Heinz Holliger (oboe).

The set makes a significant contribution to the Schoenberg 150th anniversary year, as well as telling a compelling story of one of the UK’s most innovative performing ensembles.

TRACK LIST

CD 1 
MOZART:
Serenade K. 361 ‘Gran Partita’    
FIRST RELEASE ON CD

CD 2 
MOZART:
Serenades K. 375 & 388
Antony Pay
FIRST RELEASE ON CD

CD 3 
SPOHR:
Clarinet Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Antony Pay 
FIRST RELEASE ON CD

CD 4 
SCHUBERT:
Mass No. 4 
Wind Octet D.72*
Eine kleine Trauermusik 
Gesang der Geister über den Wassern
Phyllis Bryn-Julson; Jan DeGaetani
Anthony Rolfe Johnson; Malcolm King
London Sinfonietta Chorus
*FIRST RELEASE ON CD

CD 5 
SCHOENBERG:
Verklärte Nacht*
Serenade Op. 24
John Shirley-Quirk
*FIRST INTERNATIONAL RELEASE ON CD

CD 6 
SCHOENBERG:
Chamber Symphony No. 1*
Pierrot Lunaire
Ein Stelldichein*
Herzgewächse*
Three Pieces for Chamber Orchestra*
Nachtwandler (Brettl-Lieder)*
Mary Thomas; June Barton
*FIRST INTERNATIONAL RELEASE ON CD

CD 7 
SCHOENBERG:
Wind Quintet
Der Wunsch des Liebhabers*
Der neue Klassizimus*
Lied der Waldtaube (Gurrelieder)*
Die eiserne Brigade
Weihnachtsmusik*
Anna Reynolds
London Sinfonietta Chorus
*FIRST INTERNATIONAL RELEASE ON CD

CD 8 
SCHOENBERG:
Suite Op. 29
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte 
Phantasy for Violin and Piano*
Gerald English
Nona Liddell; John Constable
*FIRST INTERNATIONAL RELEASE ON CD

CD 9
STRAVINSKY:
Agon*
BERG: Chamber Concerto 
György Pauk; Paul Crossley
*FIRST INTERNATIONAL RELEASE ON CD

CD 10
GERHARD:
Libra; Gemini; Leo
FIRST RELEASE ON CD

CDs 11–12 
WEILL:
Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
Mahagonny Songspiel; Violin Concerto
Happy End; Das Berliner Requiem
Pantomime I; Vom Tod im Wald
Mary Thomas; Meriel Dickinson
Philip Langridge; Ian Partridge
Benjamin Luxon; Michael Rippon
Nona Liddell

CD 13
LIGETI:
Melodien for Orchestra
Double Concerto 
Chamber Concerto
Aurèle Nicolet; Heinz Holliger

ARTISTS

London Sinfonietta
David Atherton