Arnold Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) - for string orchestra

The string orchestra variant of Schönberg's String Sextet op. 4 of 1899 originally dates from 1917, and has enjoyed undiminished popularity ever since, so popular that, according to the relevant statistics, it is played more often than all other Schönberg pieces together. Inspired by Richard Dehmel's (1863-1920) romantic poem from The Woman An The World, published in1896, the composer wrote a special programme-music, re-formulating the ideas of his favourite poet with the help of a prodigiously extensive range of instruments, ranging from direct "onomatopoeic" effects to transposed, psychologically loaded, sophisticated instrumental structures and expressions of the themes of glorification and revelation.

Musical science has pronounced constantly changing judgements on this piece. It has often been considered the end-note of 19th century music, but some feel that its intonation may have laid the foundations for 20th century music. Many feel the latter to be true, quoting such circumstances as the re-evaluation of programme-music r la Liszt, the surpassing of Wagner's concept of the musical drama and the novelties in orchestration and instrument use. With the passage of time, the progress of musical science, the rejection of the theory of linear evolution in musical history, the recognition of parallel and synchronous processes and, finally, the spectacular return at the millennium to the linguistic and philosophical world of tonality and diatony, the latter seems more likely.

Transfigured Night will, anyway, remain a popular repertory piece and a never ending serious challenge to string orchestras.


Dmitri Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony

Few 20th century oeuvres have suffered more from history's ideological conflicts and autocratic public life transfigured by autocratic politics than that of Shostakovich. His highly idiosyncratic, incredibly complex, creative personality has often fallen victim to simplification, stereotyping and false accusations; his works have often provided a - fake - pretext for the aesthetic dictates of a restrictive cultural policy. The power of his art, however, has surmounted the barriers of incomprehension; the world has come to recognise the strong character behind his apparently vulnerable and fragile personality, and by the end of the last century, a genuine Shostakovich cult had evolved and is still active today.

Shostakovich wrote the String Quartet No. VIII. op. 110 following his visit to Dresden in 1960, and although contemporary analysts simply saw it as the funeral music for the victims of Fascism, it is impossible not to associate it with Richard Strauss's Dresden experience, the trauma of the destroyed city having led Strauss to write his Metamorphoses in 1945.

The highly personal voice, the empathy, the contrast between the almost motionless mourning and the passionate emotions, the alteration of formal sections almost without instruments and of complex, congested ones, the creative approach shunning illustration, always keen on the dramatic interconnections make String Quartet No. VIII. an emblematic oeuvre d'art of the 20th century.

Rudolf Barshay, the renowned leader of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, adapted the quartet to string orchestra already in 1967, describing it, with genre historical accuracy, as a Chamber Symphony.

György Selmeczi

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The Camerata Transsylvanica was founded in 1966 at the Transylvanian town of Marosvásárhely in Rumania, and has for generations represented that very special school of string and chamber music, which emerged between the two world wars and continued after World War II - merging the French style r la Enescu Thibaud, and the Vienna/Budapest tradition marked by Hubay's name, and having produced outstanding results ever since. There is hardly a major orchestra in the world without at least one or two disciples of this school.

Owing to well-known circumstances, the seventies and eighties wave of migration brought an especially large number of Transylvanian musicians to Budapest, making it possible for Transsylvanica to be re-formed in Budapest, in May 1989, under the leadership of violinist János Selmeczi.

The orchestra's repertory covers almost every period of musical history, from Baroque to contemporary music, with special regard to the already classical pieces of the 20th century, including those by R. Strauss, Schönberg, Honegger, Stravinsky, Bartók and Lutosławski, and the compositions of the generation following Bartók (Veress, Lajtha, Farkas, Maros, Szőllőssy). Camerata's name is associated with several first performances, and many prominent contemporary Hungarian composers write expressly for the orchestra. The ensemble is committed to the performance of Transylvanian Hungarian, Rumanian and German composers, and makes conscious efforts to pass on the Central European instrumental and chamber musical tradition.

Depending on the repertory, the orchestra performs independently, under the leadership of János Selmeczi or with a guest conductor. Its most frequent conductors in the past decade were Erich Bergel, Adrian Sunshine, Pieralberto Cattaneo, Brynmore Jones, Harry Spence Lyth, Miklós Erdélyi, György Selmeczi, János Kovács and Géza Török.

The orchestra makes numerous CD, radio and TV recordings and performs at various festivals all over Europe and America. Camerata Transsylvanica is characterised by an exceptionally rich, brilliant string sound, the outstanding virtuosity of each performing artist, a chamber-music philosophy and absorption marked by the name of Sándor Végh, also of Transylvanian origin, and although the ensemble has by now become a loose association of excellent instrumentalists, their performances and recordings are a real event in musical life.


Adrian Sunshine, a pupil of Pierre Monteux, Paul Klecki and Leonard Bernstein, is Music Director of the London Chamber Musicians and Principal Guest Conductor in Athens. Previously he has been Chief Conductor in Lisbon, Music Director of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor in Rumania.

Having studied both in America and Europe, Adrian Sunshine made his opera début in London. He first performed in Britain with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra and has made long tours in Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union where he conducted the Leningrad Philharmonics on two occasions. The latter undertaking led to his appointment in Rumania, during which time he took the Rumanian Chamber Orchestra on tour abroad several times. In the course of his career, he has conducted opera and orchestral performances in more than 40 countries.