Stephen Lewis Performs the Complete Solo Piano Works of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern
“True things are beautiful, even if they are ugly.”
Last month my colleague Stephen Lewis gave two performances in his home studio of the Second Viennese School’s solo piano music. The concert was in celebration of the 150th year since Arnold Schoenberg’s birth, on September 13 1874. (Coincidentally, September 13th of this year was Friday the Thirteenth—I’m sure the notoriously superstitious Schoenberg would’ve appreciated that.) The performance was part concert, part lecture. In between pieces Lewis would discuss the music, its influence and give a broad overview of Schoenberg’s biography.
Lewis began his lecture-recital with what he called an “inoculation.” He played for us the opening bars of Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19. Each time, he asked us to listen for something else. First, let the music wash over you. Second, listen for the melody. Third, listen to the harmonies. Fourth, the counterpoint. Finally, listen with some imagery in mind, of valleys and rivers, and a feeling of anticipation. I’ve included a video below so you can partake in this exercise yourself.
This inoculation brought the small but committed audience into the sonic world of Schoenberg. The audience included avant-garde enthusiasts such as myself, curious newcomers and a couple of Lewis’ students. One of the audience members was a pianist that admitted to not enjoying Schoenberg much, but she thought that such a performance could open her ears to a deeper appreciation of the composer’s work.
From a performance perspective, Lewis was stellar. His introductions to each piece were erudite and stoic, cracking an occasional smile while talking about the music he loves. Like Schoenberg himself, Lewis presented this music for a small audience of admirers and curious onlookers. He often played sections with his eyes closed, focused on the transportative aspects of Schoenberg's music. Us in the audience sat attentively, occasionally twiddling pens or shifting papers, or taking another sip of seltzer or wine. (My compliments also go to Lewis’ wife Audra, who prepared a great selection of light snacks and beverages for us.)
On his website, Lewis included a quotation from an audience member from a different performance, who said “I never liked Schoenberg until today.” Lewis is building an audience for what he calls “neglected music” through expert performances of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern’s solo piano works. As a fellow Schoenberg admirer, I’m very happy to be in like-minded company with other musicians who are rescuing the work of one of the most misunderstood figures in music history.
Playing Schoenberg’s music can be for audiences and performers alike. It’s not simply a matter of hitting the right notes or dissecting the obtuse score, but of making music out of the shapes and lines. It is the performer’s job to understand the music on a deep level, to bring out motifs, hidden countermelodies and dynamic movement. In other words, they must make the music vital. Through his expressive playing and his short lectures, Lewis accomplished this lofty goal.
Each piece had a clear character Lewis brought to the fore. The inaugural music of the Second Viennese School aesthetic and first on the program at this performance was Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11. The three movements may seem like a bunch of random notes. But to the open-minded and attentive listener, one will notice motifs repeat and return after long digressions within each movement. The purely functional title Drei Klavierstucke hides how much variety there is in a mere twelve-or-so minutes of music. The first movement was heady, but inviting. The second movement is a slow, creeping march broken up by biting chords. The final movement was chaotic and frantic.
Despite being labeled as “atonal,” there are hints of familiar chords and clear musical motifs–the second movement is clearly based on a repeated D-F-D-F in the low register, hinting at a D minor tonal center. Musical ideas may repeat two or three times in a row with minor variations, as if the composer was working out the best manifestation of each idea in real time right before us. (”Should I play these notes at the same time, or play them one at a time? What should the rhythm be?”) A new musical language needs to do more than create new words; it demands a new musical grammar and syntax. To hear Schoenberg try to create new music from scratch can be jarring, but exciting in its own right.
This gets to something I think a lot of people get wrong about Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School in general: an over-emphasis on structure and analysis over expression. I suspect this has to do with the way that post-war composers such as Boulez and Babbitt seemed more interested in serialism as a musical system in and of itself rather than a tool for creative expression. Schoenberg, Berg and Webern did not think of themselves as upending the principles that made music great, but rather seeking a new means to express those principles of classical and romantic aesthetics: clarity, drama, personal expression, and technical mastery among others.
Take the next piece on the program, Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata. The piece is clearly in B minor, with obvious cadences on the tonic. But on a moment-to-moment basis, the music becomes overgrown, obscuring the underlying structure to the point of near incomprehensibility. This begs the question to the listener, what am I listening to? Am I looking for musical signposts for the B minor harmony, or taking each musical moment on its own? Am I trying to impose a structure upon this music before I even listen to it?
In comparison, Schoenberg’s Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23 felt far more angular and mechanical. If the Opus 11 piano pieces were surrealist, abstract expressionist character pieces, then the Opus 23 piano pieces were cubist portraits, almost disturbing in their precision.
After an intermission, we returned to listen to Piano Pieces, Op. 33 and Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19, both by Schoenberg. In general the Opus 19 pieces were far more playful, with the Opus 33 pieces more heady. Perhaps to the delight of the more skeptical audience members, all of Schoenberg’s solo piano pieces are quite short. The music flies by at an impressive pace, necessitating further listening to dissect and understand the music.
The only piece by Anton Webern was his Variations, Op. 27. This piece was much more radically different from anything that came before: far more austere in tone, more precise and geometric in its construction. Lewis said it’s “hard to play because it is so simple.” That may seem counterintuitive, but it is extraordinarily difficult to make real music from a mere three notes, even in a more accessible tonal context. How do you make sing music that is so abstract? Webern himself trusted the musicians to know how to approach the music. But just in case, the score makes frequent use of hand-crossing, which is a sight to behold as Lewis appeared to be making a cat’s cradle over the piano keys.
The final piece on the program was Schoenberg's Suite, Op. 25, which Lewis considers his masterpiece. This was Schoenberg’s first fully twelve-tone piece, utilizing a new system he devised for deliberately avoiding tonal music. One can find explanations of this technique elsewhere. What surprised me was how driving the rhythms were: it becomes almost a distorted, mocking version of a baroque dance suite. The final movement may share almost no audible similarities to a typical Gigue, though the lilting 6/8 dance rhythm is still there in some sense.
Lewis ended his performance with an interesting encore: the “Forlane” movement from Ravel’s piano suite, Le Tombeau de Couperin. An odd companion, but the fit makes sense. While still clearly tonal, the melody’s dissonant leaps and pungent harmonies sound a lot like Schoenberg, filtered through a more neoclassical lens.
As an extra little treat, Lewis on the concert program some of his “Personal Schoenberg Superlatives.” Things such as his “Most Underrated” (String Quartet 3, Op. 30), “Most Rewarding to Revisit” (Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31), “Most Influential.” (Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21), and “Hidden Gem” (Phantasy for Violin and Piano, Op. 47). I like this a lot: it gives the audience some more homework to do if they are so inclined. After this great performance, it’s on us now to listen to Schoenberg and make what we will of his monumental and difficult oeuvre.
