A monodrama
Poem by Marie Pappenheim
Music by Schoenberg with Helga Pilarczyk as The Woman
Residentie Orchestra
Conducted by Hans Rosbaud
The monodrama Erwartung (* Awaiting' is perhaps the best translation), to a text by Marie Pappenheim, was written in the short space of seventeen days (August 27 to September 12, 1909). Scored for soprano and orchestra, it shows a woman waiting in a gloomy wood for her lover who does not come; at last she comes upon his dead body and knows that another has taken him from her. The music, which is a veritable treasure-house of new and imaginative orchestral sounds, had a profound effect on Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, particularly in his Wozzeck.
Humphrey Searle