Type: Classical Concert
Conductor: Claudio Abbado
Orchestra: The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra
Soloist: Juliane Banse
Program: Mahler's Symphony No.4, Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas and Meisande
Venue: Wiener Musikverein, Vienna, Austria
Year: 2006

Abbado pairs Mahler’s radiant Fourth Symphony with Schoenberg’s sumptuous early masterpiece, Pelleas und Melisande. Quite a lot of people who think they don’t like Schoenberg might actually like this concert. Written before his later atonal style, this Romantic orchestral music is closer in spirit to Wagner than to the difficult “modern music” people associate with his name. Schoenberg radically changed harmony and his later 12-tone method was hugely influential although it was loved and hated.