As part of our seasonal theme Controversy!, musical worlds collide – in this case, those of Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich, who dismissed Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique as “a meaningless game with sounds,” is represented here by two wittily ironic orchestral works. One is the Suite for Variety Orchestra, which gained fame under the title “Jazz Suite No. 2”. The other is his Symphony No. 15, a colourful journey through music history, with echoes of Rossini and Wagner. Schoenberg’s string trio, op. 45, by contrast, is a strikingly complex composition – and yet full of expressiveness.