"...magnificent, and unfailingly energetic..."

Oct. 7, 2006 performance reviewed by Karl Henning.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim, piano
James Levine, conducting (and piano, after)
Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, Opus 4
Schoenberg, Piano Concerto, Opus 42
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58

Encore (Barenboim & Levine playing):
Schubert, Fantasy in f minor for
piano four hands, D. 940/Opus 103

"No composer has had more baggage attached to his very name than Arnold Schoenberg," writes Jan Swafford.

To the question, Why do you think audiences continue to be so frightened of Schoenberg's music? James Levine replies: "I really haven't got a clue! Probably because there's been so much written that makes it controversial even before audiences have had the opportunity actually to experience it" (emphasis mine).

The extraordinary thing is that we are here, more than 50 years after Schoenberg's death, seeing echoes of the fright over Schoenberg, the paper-tiger controversy, in music journalism today; and that Levine is here in the position of still introducing these pieces to the city of Boston. That there is a substantial body of music written by composers now alive, whose appeal to audiences is partly a function of a "Thank God it's not related to Schoenberg & Co. in any way!" subtext. That in program notes to a Boston performance of Harrison Birtwistle, the writer specifically reassures the reader that Birtwistle's methods are not Schoenberg's methods.

The extraordinary thing is, that all this 'journalistic toxicity' attaching to Schoenberg puzzles James Levine, a tireless musician who has been familiar with Schoenberg's music for years, and just plain likes it, not as theory, not as novel method, not as a tidy way to clear the house of unwelcome guests – but just plain likes the music.

This was a concert to make one wonder what all the fuss over Schoenberg is about.

Verklärte Nacht, of course – like the Gurrelieder – is early, long-breathed High-Romantic Schoenberg: in other words, those pieces by Schoenberg which you recommend to anyone predisposed to dislike Schoenberg. They are tonal, though tonality is stretched only just shy of the breaking point. Verklärte Nacht is in D, though it is in a very different sort of D than the Schumann Fourth, or the Beethoven Ninth, or the Bach Chaconne for violin solo. It became a commonplace in the 20th century, that some of the audience never gave off regretting that Stravinsky could not go on writing in the style of The Firebird forever, nor Schoenberg in the manner of Verklärte Nacht.

Verklärte Nacht is so rich a work I cannot imagine tiring of it, I discover new 'bits' and before-unnoticed relations between elements each time I listen to it. It is an ingenious tone-poem, whose music is at once very tightly structured, and yet whose musical structure is intuitively allied to the structure of the Dehmel poem upon which it is a musical reflection.

Schoenberg originally composed it as a string sextet, in the last half of the year 1899. He arranged it for string orchestra in 1917, though without altering the score: simply by multiplying the players and adding contrabasses as occasional octave reinforcement to the cellos. His final revision of the string orchestra version dates from 1943, which provides ironic temporal juxtposition to the Piano Concerto.

One half-expects wrily apt number games around Schoenberg, and so he composed his Opus 42 Piano Concerto between July 5 and December 29, 1942. The concerto is twelve-tone (and I will hope that this revelation does not set my reader's pulse racing), and is (perhaps surprisingly) Brahmsian in tone – not big-boned, Brahms-piano-concerti Brahmsian, but intimately, opus-117-intermezzi Brahmsian.

So much of Schoenberg's music lay hidden in shadow during his residency in the US, that it is remarkable that the public premiere of the Piano Concerto was a radio broadcast, on 6 January 1944; soloist Eduard Steuermann was accompanied by the NBC Symphony, led by Stokowski. Equally remarkable, though less of a surprise, is that as a result of subsequent public furor over the piece, NBC did not renew Stokowski's contract.

Apparently, one takes risks programming new music in the US.

Daniel Barenboim was magnificent, and unfailingly energetic, in both the Schoenberg and Beethoven concerti. What is more, after tumultuous applause at the conclusion of the concert, Barenboim and Levine sat down together at the piano for an encore, the Schubert f minor Fantasy for four hands: a substantial piece, and no mere bagatelle – and aptly chosen, for there were motifs which charmingly echoed bits of the Beethoven Opus 58. It was an evening full of great music-making.