Initiated in September 2019, the McGill Schoenberg Ensemble is a chamber orchestra that serves as a workshop ensemble for graduate conducting students and students registered for Introduction to Orchestral Conducting, under the supervision of TBA.
The McGill Schoenberg Ensemble, consisting in selected McGill students, meets once a week on a repertoire that includes original works from Ravel, Schoenberg or Debussy to today’s composers as well as transcriptions of masterworks by composers such as Brahms, Mussorgsky, Mahler and Stravinsky.
The core repertoire of this ensemble is Arnold Schoenberg’s approach in transcribing masterpieces for chamber orchestra for pedagogical and dissemination purposes. Performance students are offered to develop their knowledge of this repertoire for ensemble of soloists as well as original repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Two versions of the Schoenberg Ensemble are rehearsed alternately: the Arnold Chamber Ensemble (up to 15 musicians) and the “Pierrot Quintet” (flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello).
