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Marin Alsop explores the impact of Arnold Schoenberg's move to the United States in 1933 both on his own music and that of his new homeland. She traces Schoenberg's arrival and early days in New York, her own hometown, and his subsequent move to Los Angeles where he joined an illustrious community of emigres including Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky and Alma Mahler. Schoenberg famously enjoyed playing tennis with Charlie Chaplin and George Gershwin, and he made an indelible mark on the Hollywood film industry, which was in its golden era at the time.

On the surface, Schoenberg enjoyed living in the USA, but what happened to his relationship with the Old World, and especially the music of the Austro-Germanic tradition, after he emigrated, and how did his reconversion to Judaism influence his life and work in the USA?

Marin Alsop talks to Schoenberg's youngest son, Larry Schoenberg, who still lives in Los Angeles, and both the pianist Mitsuko Uchida and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who are closely associated with Schoenberg's Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto respectively. She also talks to the composer Tod Machover, who has been fascinated by Schoenberg since an early age and wrote an opera entitled 'Schoenberg in Hollywood', and the American writer Alex Ross. Plus the Schoenberg experts Sabine Feisst, author of 'Schoenberg's New World', Leon Botstein, also a conductor, and Therese Muxeneder, of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

The programme also includes voice recordings of Arnold Schoenberg, used by kind permission of the Arnold Schönberg Center, and archive sounds of New York in 1934 from the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina.

Presenter: Marin Alsop
Producer: Elizabeth Arno
Mix Engineer: Martin Appleby