Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5 / Piano Concerto, Op. 42

"A thought-provoking coupling."
(MusicWeb May 2005)

'Amalie Malling proves an intelligent and sympathetic soloist… Michael Schønwandt gets very good results from the Danish Orchestra and the texture is lucid and transparent, and splendidly recorded.'
The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs on the Piano Concerto

'…thrilling and successful. Digital clarity is evident, and just what this rich, complex score needed…'
Which CD on Pelléas et Mélisande

'Amalie Malling… offers a shapely and intelligent reading, unhurried and undogmatic in phrasing, with articulate and sensitively voiced textures and a good feeling for Schoenbergs pained lyricism…'
Gramophone on the Piano Concerto

Even today there are many who find Schoenberg's work, with its twelve-tone serialism, violent and incomprehensible. However, neither of the works on this disc is in the enfants terrible style of the Second Viennese School. Pelleas und Melisande was written in the early 1900s, prior to Schoenberg's experimentation with atonality, and is a glorious example of post-Wagnerian romanticism. The Piano Concerto is a much later work, dating from the World War II years, but though it is based on a twelve-note series, it is far less forbidding, even at first hearing, than many of Schoenberg's serial compositions. The style of piano writing often looks back to the nineteenth century, and many of the tunes are distinctly singable, with hints of traditional harmony. In such densely scored works as these, recording quality is paramount and the present recordings are famed for their bright, clean sound, enabling the orchestral detail to be sharply delineated.

A new coupling linking two of Schoenberg's more accessible works.