Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

If Schönberg is to be taken at his word, his journey into modernity was a search for God: “I have long been wanting to write an oratorio” he stated as early as 1912, “the content of which is to be about how a person of today, who has traversed materialism, socialism, anarchy, who was an atheist but who has preserved a last smidgeon of the old faith, finally arrives at finding God and becoming religious. Learning to pray!” Despite a lifelong struggle, the “Jakobsleiter” (Jacob’s Ladder) remained a fragment – leaving the interpreter with the exciting decision of understanding the story of Jacob’s battle with the angel as a testimony of life or of faith. Unlike this composition, which was initiated for soloists, choir and a Mahler-style large orchestra, Iannis Xenakis’ “Shaar” (gateway) – whose Hebrew title alludes to mythical ideas of taking up contact with the afterworld – gets by with only a string orchestra. With his incredibly concentrated sounds he creates effects with a breath-taking archaic force that tap into a new dimension of our vision of modernity. Between the creed captured in the music of the “Jakobsleiter” and the archaism of “Shaar” are Gustav Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder”, which musically express the unfathomable.