Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
PSAPPHA ENSEMBLE
Benedict Holland - violin
Heather Wallington - viola
Jennifer Langridge - cello
This performance was streamed live on 1st October 2020 from Hallé St Peter's in Manchester (UK) with a small socially distanced audience. This is a new edit of the original livestream and presented in 4K. To view the 4K version we recommend you use Google Chrome or the Firefox browser.
Schnittke’s String Trio also relates to the musical past. It was written in 1985 to mark the anniversaries of Berg’s birth and death, and it alludes through Berg to Mahler—though the ghost looming largest here, as in much of Schnittke’s music, is that of Shostakovich. Of the two big movements, playing together for twenty-five minutes, the first is tethered to its opening idea: a cadence in search of a proper resolution, a cadence always leaving more to be said, sometimes violently. There follows a slow movement which, again, strives against a sense of loss and against endless dissatisfaction.
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Psappha is grateful for the support we receive from funders which enables us to reach a wider audience. With thanks to Arts Council England; Foyle Foundation; Granada Foundation; and the RVW Trust.
Please support Psappha's work: psappha.com/support-us
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FILM PRODUCTION
Rob Kelledy - Sound Recording and Mastering
Soup Collective - Cameras
Tim Williams - Editor and Producer
PSAPPHA ENSEMBLE
Benedict Holland - violin
Heather Wallington - viola
Jennifer Langridge - cello
This performance was streamed live on 1st October 2020 from Hallé St Peter's in Manchester (UK) with a small socially distanced audience. This is a new edit of the original livestream and presented in 4K. To view the 4K version we recommend you use Google Chrome or the Firefox browser.
Schnittke’s String Trio also relates to the musical past. It was written in 1985 to mark the anniversaries of Berg’s birth and death, and it alludes through Berg to Mahler—though the ghost looming largest here, as in much of Schnittke’s music, is that of Shostakovich. Of the two big movements, playing together for twenty-five minutes, the first is tethered to its opening idea: a cadence in search of a proper resolution, a cadence always leaving more to be said, sometimes violently. There follows a slow movement which, again, strives against a sense of loss and against endless dissatisfaction.
-----
Psappha is grateful for the support we receive from funders which enables us to reach a wider audience. With thanks to Arts Council England; Foyle Foundation; Granada Foundation; and the RVW Trust.
Please support Psappha's work: psappha.com/support-us
-----
LEARN MORE AND FOLLOW PSAPPHA
Website: psappha.com
Subscribe to Psappha's Enewsletter: buff.ly/31HjEHV
Twitter: twitter.com/PsapphaEnsemble
Facebook: facebook.com/psappha.ensemble
Instagram: instagram.com/psapphaensemble
FILM PRODUCTION
Rob Kelledy - Sound Recording and Mastering
Soup Collective - Cameras
Tim Williams - Editor and Producer

![Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) - Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4
This performance was given on 4th October 2014 as part of a concert to celebrate the 80th Birthday of Psapphas Patron, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies who attended the performance and can been seen in the audience if you look carefully!
Benedict Holland & Lucy Baker - violins
Heather Wallington & Catherine Yates - violas
Jennifer Langridge & Paul Grennan - celli
Learn more about Psappha - http://www.psappha.com
Please Support Psappha: http://www.psappha.com/support-us/
Composed at the end of the nineteenth century, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) pulls together some principal strands in the music of that century’s second half. From Liszt comes the ideal of a one-movement symphonic form, from Wagner touches of harmony and the use of pregnant, versatile themes, from Brahms the string-sextet medium and the conscientious development. As the composer himself noted towards the end of his life: ‘The thematic construction is based on Wagnerian “model and sequence” above a roving harmony…and on Brahms’ technique of developing variation…. [But] I think there were also some Schoenbergian elements to be found in the breadth of the melodies, …in contrapuntal and motivic combinations, and in the semi-contrapuntal movement of the harmony and its basses against the melody.’ The determination to synthesize, too, was Schoenberg’s own, and characteristic of his later career.
The idea of a symphonic poem for string sextet seems to have preceded this particular composition, since there survives an abandoned beginning of another sextet – Toter Winkel (Blind Corner), after a poem by Gustav Falke – which may represent a first, failed shot. Success came when Schoenberg turned to the verse of Richard Dehmel, four of whose poems he set as songs in the same year of 1899. (Strauss, too, was absorbed with Dehmel at this time.) The poem Verklärte Nacht is in five stanzas, of which the first introduces the characters: a man and a woman walking through a moonlit oak wood. In the second the woman remorsefully confesses that she is carrying another man’s child. The third stanza recapitulates the opening image, as if giving the man time to think. Then in the fourth stanza he comforts his companion, points to the gleaming universe around them, and declares that the child will be transfigured into his own. Finally they embrace and walk on.
These five sections are respected by Schoenberg’s music, though with the addition of a short coda. The first and third parts (linked in the music as they are in the text), and also the fifth, are brief. In the second section Schoenberg represents the woman’s anguished outburst in an intense development, exactly in the position where it ought to be in a symphonic unfolding. The balancing fourth section reflects the poem in being more calm and rapturous, and fulfills symphonic duties in throwing new light on themes from the second part: just as the unborn child is transfigured, so is the musical material, and the opening D minor (the key most prominent in early Schoenberg) is swerved towards D major. Perhaps this was one of the attractions of the poem, that it provided a story of metamorphosis – even that it suggested that one could, by will and heaven, change the child of another (Wagner, Brahms) into one’s own.
Verklärte Nacht
Richard Dehmel translation by Paul Griffiths
Two people walk a bare cold grove;
the moon moves on, they look above.
The moon moves on, over high oaks;
the sky is bright: no cloudlet breaks
the glow; twigs make black cracks.
It is a woman’s voice that speaks.
I bear a child, and not by you,
I am a sinner, here by you.
I did myself the greatest wrong,
not to believe I could know bliss,
and yet I knew what it was to long
for a richer life, for a mother’s bliss
and duty; so I lost myself,
so, shuddering, I gave myself,
let myself to a stranger belong,
thought myself to be born anew.
Now life brings revenge headlong:
now I’ve encountered you, o you.
Her step unsteady, she goes along.
She looks above; the moon moves on.
Light bathes her darkening looks.
It is a man’s voice that speaks:
You bear a child, you bear no guilt:
Release the burden on your soul.
Look: universal light is spilt
on every thing: on each, on all.
Our journey lies on a cold sea
but we are warmed inwardly:
your glow in me, my glow in you.
That will transfigure the child you bear
and make it ours: our flesh, our care.
You have made me reconciled;
you have made me too a child.
He puts an arm around her hips,
the air they breathe blends in a kiss.
Two people walk through high bright night.
© Paul Griffiths Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) - Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qLdE2WhEj44/mqdefault.jpg)








