Pelléas and Mélisande, op. 5 / Verklärte Nacht, op. 4

Album by Arnold Schönberg & Daniel Barenboim & Orchestre de Paris & Pierre Boulez & New York Philharmonic

Pelléas and Mélisande, Op. 5 / Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 are two early orchestral and chamber works by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, composed in 1902 and 1899 respectively. Both pieces employ dense late-Romantic chromaticism and expansive textures that bridge Wagnerian influence and Schoenberg's emerging exploration of expanded tonality and harmonic ambiguity, with Verklärte Nacht originally written for string sextet (later arranged for orchestra) and Pelléas and Mélisande conceived as an orchestral tone poem that foreshadows his move towards atonality and the aesthetics of the Second Viennese School.