At Salzburg Festival, a Polarizing Composer Brings Artists Together

The composer Arnold Schönberg revolutionized the course of Western classical music. By dismantling the tonal system of major and minor keys as he self-consciously placed himself in the German tradition, he is also one of the 20th century’s most polarizing figures.

The 150th anniversary of his birth is being celebrated this year with exhibits, concerts and workshops. The official birthday concert is scheduled for Sept. 13 at the Musikverein in Vienna, with the monumental “Gurre-Lieder” (“Songs of Gurre”) performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and conducted by its music director, Petr Popelka. Also in September, the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York will unveil an exhibit to commemorate the anniversary.

And from July 27 to Aug. 24, the Salzburg Festival will present the concert series “Time With Schönberg,” juxtaposing the composer with everyone from his contemporary Maurice Ravel to his disciple Alban Berg.

Schönberg’s theories emerged from a forward-looking intellectual climate in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century that included Sigmund Freud and painters such as Oskar Kokoschka and Gustav Klimt. The composer would write some of his most important works in Berlin, however, which he also established as a home base starting in 1912. After Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933, Schönberg emigrated to Los Angeles, where he spent the last two decades of his life.

In Salzburg, the soprano Anna Prohaska, 42, will sing in the expressionist String Quartet No. 2, a work that she has been performing since 2007 and considers a “cornerstone of her career.” Georg Nigl, 52, a bass-baritone, will take on the song cycle “The Book of the Hanging Gardens,” a score that has been sitting on his shelf for three decades, and will return to the satirical, late-period work “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte.” The pianist Tamara Stefanovich, 51, will (together with Nenad Lecic) perform the Second Chamber Symphony in a version for two pianos written by the composer after he left Germany.

The following conversations have been edited and condensed. Prohaska and Stefanovich were interviewed by phone from Aix-en-Provence, France, and Berlin; Nigl was interviewed in person in Vienna.