It’s more than half a century since the London Sinfonietta was responsible for a festival at the Southbank Centre that featured the instrumental and ensemble works of Arnold Schoenberg alongside those of his pupil Roberto Gerhard. It was an extensive and thorough survey, which played an important part in establishing Schoenberg’s music as part of the modernist mainstream in Britain. But its effect has hardly persisted, and the 150th anniversary of his birth last month passed almost unnoticed here.
The Sinfonietta belatedly marked the occasion with a concert conducted by Jonathan Berman that included four works by Schoenberg. It was clear that these had been chosen to represent the different phases of his composing career, though why the programme needed “enhancing” by Theatre of Sound with stagey lighting, a haze machine, and readings from Schoenberg’s writings between the works, was less clear.
