Professor Julie Brown was recently interviewed for a radio broadcast on Czech Radio Vltava in connection with a rare performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder in Prague.

Julie Brown, who is author of the monograph Schoenberg and Redemption (Cambridge University Press), was recently interviewed about Schoenberg’s monumental cantata Gurrelieder for a broadcast accompanying its Prague performance and broadcast. The rare performance was a co-production between the Czech National Theatre (Národní divadlo) Opera and State Opera, with Petr Popelka conducting Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra 102 years after Alexander Zemlinsky conducted its Prague premier at the New German Theatre (Neues Deutsches Theater).

Schoenberg at his most Wagnerian, Gurrelieder occupies a curious place in the composer’s output. It is unusual owing not only to its colossal orchestral forces but also its mix of symphonic song cycle, dramatic cantata, and melodrama, and even its compositional timeline.  During the broadcast Julie Brown spoke about the work’s creation and performance histories as well as its form, which stems from its origins in a song cycle competition. Despite its musical language it was only completed and first performed after Schoenberg’s radical 1909 compositional departure from tonality. 

The broadcast, created and edited by Marek Mojžíšek, can be heard here (in Czech!)