Schoenberg: Serenade; Five Pieces for Orchestra; Ode to Napoleon

Schoenberg's Serenade is comparable to Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale. Both works are effective modernist parodies of classical genres. But unlike Stravinsky, Schoenberg's treatments of marches and waltzes are never coolly burlesque, but hyper expressive--indeed, expressionist. Pierre Boulez conducts his Ensemble InterContemporain, underlining the music's prickly sonorities and metallic edges. In his interpretation, the expertly separated timbres are the hinge of the composition. Also on the disc is a classic reading of the Five Pieces for Orchestra and the curious Ode to Napoleon, a work for ensemble with narrator. --Joshua Cody