This peculiar work is something of an oddity, even among the music of Schoenberg, who wrote so much that is hard to classify. It is a setting of Byron's angry diatribe against Napoleon, and owing to the date of composition and the fact that the composer, a Jew, was forced to leave Austria in the thirties, is generally considered to be directed at Hitler. Schoenberg never said as much, and appears to have composed it fairly quickly, so it is tempting to view its dramatic impetus and its intense compression as symptomatic of composition almost at one sitting. The instrumentalists, far from providing a mere background, are an integral part of the drama, which is in the form of a scena with a miniature overture. Boulez's players have tremendous bite and clarity, and if the soloist were better this would be a dream version, but Pittman-Jennings, like so many singers and despite some pedigree in sprechgesang , is completely at a loss when it comes to the spoken word, and at times sounds ridiculous.
Images pour orchestre.