Debussy: L'après-midi d'un faune & Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande

This album marks the beginning of a new era with Lahav Shani as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic. On his first album with the orchestra, he presents two masterpieces from the dawn of modern music. Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is regarded as a key work of Impressionism and, even at its world premiere, captivated audiences with its finely nuanced timbres and transparent orchestral texture. Arnold Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande, by contrast, is a work of monumental orchestral power and relentless intensity – an early work still rooted in the tonal legacy of Wagner, Mahler and Strauss, yet characterised by a creative boldness that already foreshadows the dawn of a new era.