On November 4, 1948, the Carlisle Gymnasium in Albuquerque, New Mexico, played host to one of the most unlikely concerts in history. That night the local orchestra, consisting of secretaries, doctors, lawyers, a tailor, a florist and a group of high school students, was joined by 14 amateur singers from the town of Estancia to perform a new work by one of the world’s most celebrated composers, the formidable Arnold Schoenberg.
Only a few years earlier, as classical music critic Jeremy Eichler points out in this Baillie Gifford-prize nominated book, the idea of Schoenberg’s latest work being premiered in dusty, provincial New Mexico would have seemed unimaginable. Across the world, after all, he was seen as one of the great embodiments of central European culture.
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