Schönberg: Gurre-Lieder / Opening Night

At the premiere of the monumental oratorio in 1913 in Vienna, Anton Webern enthused: »What a moment in my life! Unforgettable… The sensation of this roaring sound really moves me«. And this pupil of Schönberg was not the only one: the entire hall rejoiced when faced with the opulent, intoxicating sounds, which no one would have expected from Schönberg at all! The pioneer of atonality and twelve-tone music had long since distanced himself from his late-Romantic Jugendstil. When he completed the orchestration for this piece in 1910/11, which he had already started between 1900 and 1903, he, nevertheless, did not consider it obsolete, but as the »key to my entire development« and document of his musical origin.

Five renowned solo singers, Thomas Quasthoff as the narrator, the combined radio choirs from Leipzig, Berlin and Hamburg as well as the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra with double and triple wind, string and percussion strengths then let the tragic story of jealousy surrounding the Danish King Valdemar and his mistress Tove become the sonorous event for the opening of the 2024/25 NDR Season. Jens Peter Jacobsen set the medieval myth play at Gurre Castle in Zealand in 1868 in several poems, which provided Schönberg with text templates for his profound orchestral song cycle.