Arnold Schoenberg (1874, Vienna, Austria—1951, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), was a Jewish-Austrian composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, serialism and the 12-tone row. This revolutionary break with tonality was the essence of the Second Viennese School, established by Schoenberg and his contemporaries and pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern.
In his Lieder (Songs) the development of Schoenberg’s style may be clearly traced. In the early songs of Opus 2 and 12 the music is still influenced by the dense harmonic language of the Late Romantics. It is in his monumental Opus 15, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (the Book of the Hanging Gardens), that Schoenberg’s personal, atonal and highly expressive language came into full bloom. The 15 songs are settings of poems by Stefan George, describing the failed love affair of two adolescent youths in a garden, ending with the woman's departure and the disintegration of the garden, possibly as a metaphor of the destruction of tonality and traditional forms.
Soprano Jasmine Law is based in Hong Kong, she specializes in contemporary music. She sang Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble under the baton of contemporary music champion Paul Zukofsky. Pianist Nancy Loo is one of Hong Kong’s most versatile artists, she performed with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
