Schoenberg: Violin Concerto / Verklärte Nacht / Die Jakobsleiter

Three Voices of One Man

Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most controversial names in 20th-century music.

Some call him the demon who destroyed tonality; others, the saint who liberated music. But few would deny: he is the man who made music “turn.”

This album, recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko, gathers three utterly different works—Verklärte Nacht, the Violin Concerto, and Die Jakobsleiter—as if one man speaking in three voices.

Verklärte Nacht — A Gentle Beginning

Verklärte Nacht is an early Schoenberg work, written in 1899, when he still composed tonal, romantic music.

It is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, about two lovers in a moonlit night, in which the woman confesses she is pregnant with another man’s child, and the man chooses forgiveness and acceptance.

This is one of Schoenberg’s most “beautiful” works—its lush strings and melancholy melody will make you forget that its author was later the man who “destroyed music.”

Violin Concerto — The Challenge

Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto was written in 1936, a work of extreme technical difficulty and harmonic complexity.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja—the violinist famed for fearless interpretations—shows astonishing command here. She doesn’t smooth the piece out; she makes every sharp, uneasy, even ugly note an organic part of the whole.

One critic described her playing as making “this concerto, long deemed unplayable, sound as if it were breathing.”

Die Jakobsleiter — The Unfinished Cathedral

Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder) is Schoenberg’s unfinished cantata and the summit of his philosophical and musical exploration.

It is rarely included in commercial recordings, making this album especially valuable.

Jakobsleiter concerns the redemption and transformation of the soul—from chaos and repentance, to final light. Here Schoenberg, with his highly developed twelve-tone technique, paints a grand canvas of the human spirit’s ascent.

Why Listen

This album was named the top release of 2025 by The Guardian, hailed as “the year’s work of a first-rate orchestra.”

It is also one of the rarest combinations in recent years—condensing Schoenberg’s early, middle, and late phases into a single album. Whether you are a devotee of Schoenberg or wary of “modern music,” this is a rare, complete listening experience.

Further Listening

To understand Schoenberg’s historical context, Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is a key to the 20th-century turning point. And Messiaen’s Turangalîla shows another kind of 20th-century grandeur.