SCHOENBERG CHAMBER SYMPHONIES · FIVE PIECES OP.16 TWO PIANOS & PIANO FOUR-HANDS VERSIONS BY SCHOENBERG, BERG, WEBERN Matteo Fossi · Marco Gaggini pianos ARNOLD SCHOENBERG 1874-1951 Arnold Schoenberg Chamber Symphonies Op.9 & Op.38, Five Pieces Op.16 Chamber Symphonies Op.9 & Op.38, Five Pieces Op.16 Two pianos & Piano four-hands versions by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern Two pianos & Piano four-hands versions by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern 1. Chamber symphony No.1 Op.9 four-hands piano version by Alban Berg 21’36 A concert took place in the Musikverein auditorium in Vienna on 31 March 1913 that was to leave an indelible mark on the history of the Second Viennese School. The Five pieces for orchestra Op.16 programme of what soon became known as the Skandalkonzert included works by two pianos version by Anton Webern* Webern, Berg, Zemlinsky, Wagner and Mahler, as well as a performance of Arnold 2. I. Vorgefühle 2‘26 Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie Op.9. A critic writing for the Boston Evening 3. II. Vergangenes 5‘50 Transcript described the evening in a review published on 13 April: “the result was 4. III. Farben 3’39 a commotion such as never occurred in a Vienna concert hall. Hisses, laughter, and 5. IV. Peripetie 2’43 applause made a bedlam. Between numbers little groups of disputants came within 6. V. Das obligate Rezitativ 3’54 an inch of blows; one of the composers shouted remarks and entered into the row; the conductor went on strike; an official boxed the ears of a man who had publicly Chamber Symphony No.2 Op.38 assaulted him; the police commissioner ordered the hall cleared, and the concert was two pianos version by Arnold Schoenberg** stopped before the final number”. The “cubist” composers had exceeded the Viennese 7. I. Adagio 7’06 audience’s capacity for understanding what was going on. 8. II. Con fuoco 11’39 The first Kammersymphonie, which was completed in 1906 and performed for the first time in 1907, certainly represented a major development in Arnold Schoenberg’s Matteo Fossi piano I*, piano II** stylistic evolution, as the composer himself readily admitted. “After having finished Marco Gaggini piano I**, piano II* the composition of the ‘Kammersymphonie’[…] I believed I had now found my own personal style of composing and that all problems […] had been solved and that a way had been shown out of the perplexities in which we young composers had been Total time: 58’57 Recording: January 2016, Piano&Forte Studio, Perugia, Italy involved through the harmonic, formal, orchestral and emotional innovations of Sound engineer, editing, mastering: Luca Ricci Richard Wagner” (“How One Becomes Lonely”, 1937). The innovative form of a Pianos: Fazioli F-278 symphony “condensed” in an unending cycle was the final chapter of a process that Piano technician: Diego Sciurpa began with Beethoven’s Große Fuge, and continued in Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy Artist photos: Filippo Basetti Cover: Birch Forest I, 1902 by Gustav Klimt and in the Sonata in B minor by Liszt. p & © 2017 Brilliant Classics Schoenberg was well aware of his role in the history of music, as were his various the program because he was not satisfied by the rehearsals with the two pianists disciples. Each new work became the subject of keen study because it opened up (Rudolf Serkin and Ernst Bachrich, no less). original perspectives and suggested new directions. Analysing a composition often Only a manuscript version of the score survives, kept at the Österreichische meant preparing transcriptions for smaller ensembles, thus helping it make its way Nationalbibliothek, where it has been largely neglected over the past century. into concert programs. The quantity and quality of these arrangements speaks A good transcription does not necessarily imply faithfully rewriting all the original eloquently for the deep sense of connection that prevailed within this circle of material in a different guise, but rather deciding, selecting and condensing. A work musicians. as dense as the Op.9 involves other problems for the arranger: only a close analysis The version for piano four hands of the first Kammersymphonie written by Alban of the subjects and the way they interact allowed Berg to distil the symphony for the Berg in 1914 is a particularly interesting case in point. Schoenberg had already keyboard, rendering its intricate thematic structure with due clarity. The manuscript prepared an arrangement for the same ensemble in 1907, but evidently was not reveals numerous corrections and second thoughts, and also speaks for Berg’s entirely satisfied with it. So in 1913 he officially commissioned his pupil to work on meticulous analysis of the main theme and the secondary subjects. There is no way a new transcription, urging him to complete it as soon as possible. Berg was slow of knowing what did not work out in the rehearsals of October 1920, though it is in getting down to it, however, because he was finishing the piano arrangement of certainly true that the transcription is technically highly demanding, despite Berg’s Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder and at the same time was working on his Three Pieces best intentions. for Orchestra. The war broke out and events so upset him that for quite some time The Five Pieces for Orchestra Op.16 were composed in the summer of 1909 at he was unable to concentrate on any job. Yet the correspondence between Berg and the behest of Richard Strauss, for the concert season at the Hofkapelle in Berlin. Schoenberg clearly reveals that at a certain point the initial spark kindled a real flame: Schoenberg conceived of these brief works as being “absolutely not symphonic, rather Berg hurled himself into the symphony and was totally captivated by it: “This isn’t a the opposite – without architecture, without structure. Simply a lively, uninterrupted work like any other. It’s a milestone in music, sufficient for an entire generation”, he interplay of colours, rhythms and states of mind”. The revolutionary significance wrote in a letter to Schoenberg dated 8 October 1914.1 of these orchestral aphorisms is astounding: their brevity is a given fact, yet they By the end of the year the transcription was ready and accompanied by a thematic are extraordinarily expressive. The works have features in common with the Three analysis of the symphony. Berg’s intent was to write an arrangement that could Pieces for Piano Op.11 (1909), the Three Pieces for Chamber Orchestra (1910), and actually be played on the piano, rather than a version that simply aimed at facilitating the Six Pieces for Piano Op.19 (1911). It was an approach also shared by Anton study and analysis. Though the ultimate goal was public performance, however, Webern, who actually preceded his teacher with the Five Movements Op.5 for String this transcription was not as successful as others written by Schoenberg’s pupils, to Quartet, also written in 1909. The idiom is polytonal, or pantonal, with the least the extent that it does not appear to have been performed in those years, or indeed possible thematic development – or arguably none at all. This was too futuristic for published. When in 1920 Ravel visited Vienna, a concert was organized in his honour Berlin’s conservative audience, and Strauss felt that he could not include the pieces in on 23 October, with a program that included the performance of this version. To the concert. They had to wait until 3 September 1912 for the premiere performance, Schoenberg’s great disappointment, however, Berg himself decided to remove it from conducted by Sir Henry Wood in London. In the meantime, undeterred by such rejections, Schoenberg still did his best to “to the object of his dreams” and extend the relationship “with what today appears have the Five Pieces performed in public. Once again the transcription proved to to be inanimate”. To reduce all this to the black and white of the piano could seem to be essential. In January 1912 Ferruccio Busoni’s three pupils, Louis Closson, Louis be the negation of the essence of the piece. Yet Webern, who was to become the great Grünberg and Eduard Steuermann (who later studied with Schoenberg) got together pioneer of this technique, found a compelling solution that avoided superficial effects with Anton Webern to play a version for two pianos, eight hands. Schoenberg’s and focused instead on making the chord agglomerates express sound in almost diaries relate how the four pianists got on as they rehearsed: it was total chaos, and skeletal terms that herald those of the sixth piece of Op.19. In this way the colour of not even the composer himself could work out whether or not they came in correctly. the chords could come to the surface like a pencil mark. Despite the somewhat ludicrous rehearsals and problems in getting his musical ideas The second Kammersymphonie Op.38 represents the alpha and the omega of across to Busoni’s students, the concert performance itself went well. The publisher Schoenberg’s stylistic evolution. Begun straight after Op.9, in 1906, and continued Peters of Leipzig decided in the meantime to publish the score for orchestra and on various occasions through to 1916, the work did not come to light until 1939, asked the composer to add titles for the five pieces. At first Schoenberg was reluctant five years after the composer had emigrated to the United States. He had already to oblige: “the music is wonderful precisely because it says things in a way that experimented with pantonality and dodecaphony, had revolutionized compositional allows someone who understands to grasp everything, and yet it also keeps its own technique, and at this point seemed more inclined to look back at the past and secrets, of the sort that one wouldn’t confess to oneself, unrevealed secrets.