Schoenberg: Transfigured Night / Strauss: An Alpine Symphony

The Vienna Philharmonic’s subscription concerts in the Golden Hall of the renowned Musikverein are special performances reserved for subscribers. Due to the exceptional quality of the concerts and the limited number of performances, subscribers wait an average of more than 10 years for a seat. For one of these subscription concerts, the Vienna Philharmonic invited a long-time artistic companion to the podium: Christian Thielemann is linked to the traditional Viennese orchestra by more than 140 concerts and a multitude of acclaimed recordings. The live recording of his debut at the podium in the Vienna Musikverein almost 23 years ago instantly became a reference recording. Then, as today, Richard Strauss’ monumental Alpine Symphony was on the program. This work, often regarded as the culmination and pinnacle of the “tone poem” genre, stands in contrast to Arnold Schönberg’s perhaps most famous tonal composition, the orchestral version of the string sextet “Verklärte Nacht.” The highly expressive work by the 25-year-old Schönberg, composed in 1899, reads in retrospect like a farewell to the 19th century. This recording series makes these very special concerts available to a wide audience worldwide for the first time in audiovisual form.