In the twenties of the previous century, Arnold Schoenberg founded the ‘Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen’ (Society for Private Musical Performances) with the help of his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Programming chiefly recent works that had been refused at the official concert venues, the society kept aloof from the mainstream conservative concert life. For want of a complete orchestra, many composers of the time wrote downsized versions of full-fledged orchestral works.
Even today, transcriptions of a comparable nature can be found. The adaptations of compositions by Berg, Webern and Zemlinsky by the recently deceased specialist of new music Reinbert de Leeuw, are cases in point. With these adaptations, Het Collectief returns to a particularly interesting period, the Second Viennese School, torn between nostalgia for the romanticism of the nineteenth century and the inescapable push of modernity.
