# 100 Favorites: # 81



## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

*Arnold Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5; Anton Webern: Passacaglia, Op. 1
Christoph Eschenbach, Houston Symphony (Koch International Classics)*










Schoenberg's tone poem on the Maeterlinck play predates his excursions into expressionism and atonalism. The music is "hot house" late Romanticism in the manner of Mahler or Strauss. I've heard several recordings of this music, but none of them has impressed me as much as Eschenbach's. His reading fully conveys the music's dark power and mystery. Eschenbach's recording of Webern's first opus is equally convincing.


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