Schoenberg - Violin Concerto; Verklärte Nacht

The Guardian 100

Faust/Swedish RSO/Harding
(Harmonia Mundi)
Isabelle Faust’s performance of Schoenberg’s violin concerto is exceptional, and Daniel Harding matches her in musical understanding

Even now, almost 70 years after his death, the mention of Arnold Schoenberg’s name can be enough to provoke apoplexy in some quarters. Those people still hold him responsible for what they see as the irretrievable disconnect between 20th-century music and its audience; to them it was Schoenberg’s atonality and his invention of 12-note technique that started the rot.