The program begins this week with music of Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most influential composers of the last century. He, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and others constituted the Second Viennese School, where much of the free-form atonality of the mid century found its roots.
As a young composer, however, Schoenberg sought to unite the seemingly diametrically opposed strains of German Romanticism, represented by Brahms and Wagner respectively. We'll hear an early work, Transfigured Night in its orchestral version.
The program will close with Mathis der Maler, by Paul Hindemith -- a contemporary of Schoenberg who took German music in a quite different direction.
In between the two, we've got music by Buxtehude, Vivaldi, Handel, Beethoven, and Vaughan Williams
