VEREIN FÜR MUSIKALISCHE PRIVATAUFFÜHRUNGEN VOL.7

Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen Vol. 7

In 1918 Arnold Schoenberg founded the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances) in Vienna. At the age of forty-four, Schoenberg was widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of his time. After his experiences in the ultra-conservative Viennese music scene, culminating in the horrors of the infamous Scandal Concert of March 31, 1913, Schoenberg felt that the time had come to introduce a different way of presenting new music to an interested audience.

Gruppo Montebello
Gruppo Montebello was the name for many of conductor Henk Guittart’s educational ensemble projects at several European conservatoires from 1991, the year in which Guittart left his former ensemble, the Schoenberg Ensemble, until 2011. After that year the name Gruppo Montebello is exclusively used for the professional ensemble with which Henk Guittart realized his project aiming at performing and recording the complete chamber orchestra arrangements of orchestral works which were made during the times of the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for private musical performances), This Society was active in Vienna and Prague between 1918 and 1924.

Guittart revised or re-arranged all existing arrangements from the archives of the Society and added several similar arrangements that were either commissioned during his time in the Schoenberg Ensemble or made by himself in recent years. The first projects of Gruppo Montebello took place in 2011 and 2012 in Banff, Canada, where Guittart served as Director of Fall and Winter Programs at The Banff Centre. From 2015 until the final edition in 2022 of the Orlando Festival, where Guittart was Director and Artistic Leader, Gruppo Montebello resided in The Netherlands. With the present Volume 7 the Society-project comes to an end.

All Gruppo Montebello recordings are available on the Etcetera label.