# Arnold Schönberg: Pélleas und Melisande op.5



## Guest (Mar 25, 2018)

Are there any other fans of this extraordinary music?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I enjoy this beautiful work. You picked a rather obscure recording in poor sound, but I'm glad to hear Maderna's rendition.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I like it, despite its flaws; he tried to cram too much of the story into a 40-minute piece. It's a challenge keeping up with the themes and their transformations. I had to get a score and mark them with different colors so I could keep track of them. Schoenberg got in trouble for all of its vagrant chords; they are not so much chord progressions as chords made up through the motion of individual parts. 

It's characteristic of Schoenberg that in the coda at the 50 score mark, Zemlinsky suggested that he cut it to the 59 mark. Schoenberg responded by declaring that this was the best part of the whole work. He actually considered Pelleas more progressive than Transfigured Night and Gurrelieder.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I think it is a beautiful work and certainly my favourite from Schoenberg's early output. It's interesting to play this directly before his Chamber Symphony no.1 from just three years later in order to compare the economy of the latter to the lush Romantic textures of the former, especially as both are works of smaller sections played without pause.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Schoenberg is a favorite of mine, and Pelleas is an excellent major work of his...it is heavily scored, by remarkably transparent when played well [Boulez/CSO]. I love following the complex lines throughout the work.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2018)

I love it. My favorite recording is by Karajan and the BPO, especially in the remastered SACD version.


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