Claudio Abbado conducts Mahler and Schönberg

While the Viennese 1905 premiere of Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas and Melisandre did not prove a big success, audiences in Berlin gave the work a warm welcome five years later. In 2006, Schoenberg’s masterpiece returned to the Wiener Musikverein—the site of its premiere—and was greeted by the considerable enthusiasm of a very different audience.