Klangforum Wien review – Vienna focus brings lucid and colour-filled Pierrot Lunaire

Wigmore Hall, LondonSchoenberg’s revolutionary work powered the new-music ensemble’s second Wigmore programme, based around 20th-century modernismFounded by the composer and conductor Beat Furrer in 1985, Klangforum Wien is now regarded as one of Europe’s finest new-music ensembles. But, for its first visit to the Wigmore Hall in London, the Vienna-based chamber orchestra brought two programmes that focused on what was new a century ago, when, on either side of the first world war, the Austrian capital was the epicentre of modernism in music.In the second of Klangforum’s concerts, though, only the work that ended the concert, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire truly belonged to that revolutionary movement. The first half had been made up of pieces by composers who were very much watchers from the sidelines of modernism, who borrowed some of its tendencies without fully embracing them. Continue reading...

Feb 18, 2025 - 16:53
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Klangforum Wien review – Vienna focus brings lucid and colour-filled Pierrot Lunaire

Wigmore Hall, London
Schoenberg’s revolutionary work powered the new-music ensemble’s second Wigmore programme, based around 20th-century modernism

Founded by the composer and conductor Beat Furrer in 1985, Klangforum Wien is now regarded as one of Europe’s finest new-music ensembles. But, for its first visit to the Wigmore Hall in London, the Vienna-based chamber orchestra brought two programmes that focused on what was new a century ago, when, on either side of the first world war, the Austrian capital was the epicentre of modernism in music.

In the second of Klangforum’s concerts, though, only the work that ended the concert, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire truly belonged to that revolutionary movement. The first half had been made up of pieces by composers who were very much watchers from the sidelines of modernism, who borrowed some of its tendencies without fully embracing them. Continue reading...