The first and second Viennese school is the focus of Karim Said’s third album for Rubicon Classics.

Karim as a pianist received his education in renowned schools and colleges, including the Purcell School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music.

The music of this period spans nearly a century, a time in which two composers changed the course the musical scene and flourised as a consequence, Beethoven and Schoenberg.

Schoenberg’s music has reached a marvelous milestone, his jazz and waltz influenced music is considered no longer ‘modern’ as it is now 100 years old.

Just over a century earlier, Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, ‘Eroica’ pushed the boundaries of the classical symphony to breaking point and ushered in a new age. The ‘Eroica’ Variations can still shock and sound a world away! In many ways these variations have an affinity with 20th century piano composition.

Schoenberg had turned away from late romanticism and large-scale compositions and began to embrace atonalism and the twelve tone method. His featured works in this album here are extreme in their brevity and concentration, something his greatest pupil Webern was to develop further in his set of extremely dissonant and terse Variations.