On antonwebern.com, you can download free recordings of Webern’s music. I have no idea if it’s legal; according to the site, the tracks are from Boulez’s Sony complete-works set.
In other Second Viennese School listening news, you can also stream Schoenberg 24 hours a day, thanks to the Arnold Schoenberg Institute.
There’s nothing funnier than Schoenberg:
This video has been kicking around on YouTube for years now, and Alex Ross fills us in on its origins. Apparently, it was the brainchild of WCLV radio host Robert Conrad, who conceived it as an April Fool’s joke in 1977 along with Cleveland Orchestra conductors Kenneth Jean and Matthias Bamert, who conducts music by Debussy this weekend with the Rochester Philharmonic:
The spot was concocted as an April Fool’s joke in 1977. Kenneth Jean, then assistant conductor for the Cleveland Orchestra, wrote the script; Conrad announced it in the style of the K-Tel ads that were everywhere at the time; and Matthias Bamert, then resident conductor in Cleveland, participated in the production.
You might not know it to look at him, but Bamert’s quit the cut up. In a recent Democrat and Chronicle article, Stuart Low tells us about a rather unusual, pugilistically themed music video for Gershwin’s Concerto in F that Bamert appeared in, and the conductor himself gives us his children’s stock response to the question of whether they’ve followed in their father’s professional footsteps: “No,” they reply, according to Bamert, “we’re normal.”
Last week, Russell Sherman gave a recital of Schoenberg’s piano music. In his remarks to the audience, he made a point of noting that his teacher, Schoenberg acolyte Edward Steuermann, never taught these works to him. According to Sherman, Steuermann told him that “this is your music.”
Steuermann recorded Schoenberg’s piano music in the 1950s; here’s the Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11:
You can read my essay on Schoenberg’s piano music here.
Here’s an essay that appeared in the program for Russell Sherman’s recital of these works last night at Mannes as part of the Institute and Festival of Contemporary Performance. Take a look. If you’re interested, I’m happy to point you to other things to read, and recordings as well.
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You can listen to Steuermann’s recording from the 1950s of the Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11, here. Also, here’s a video of Glenn Gould and Yehudi Menuhin talking about Schoenberg’s Violin Fantasy.
On Monday, Russell Sherman is performing all of Schoenberg’s piano music in a recital at the Mannes School Concert Hall in Manhattan, the opening concert in the annual Festival for Contemporary Performance.
Sherman’s personal link to Schoenberg is his teacher Edward Steuermann. More than just a student of Schoenberg, Steuerman was the composer’s go-to pianist in Berlin and Vienna. Here in the US, Steuermann premiered the Piano Concerto in 1944 with the NBC Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski. (Originally, Schnabel was the scheduled pianist, which may have offended Steuermann.)
Despite this close connection to Schoenberg, Steuermann taught very little Schoenberg to his students, according to Sherman. Here he is in an interview with Gunther Schuller:
“Well, he hardly taught me any modern music, and even Schoenberg he wasn’t much interested in teaching. But he used to say–in that Polish way–‘That’s your music. You do what you want with it; I don’t have to teach that to you.'”
(You can listen to Steuermann’s recording of Schoenberg’s Opus 11 here, but not here.)
I had a chance to talk with Sherman a week or so ago about the recital; we talked more about hockey than music. Apparently, Sherman’s quite the Rangers fan, and we bonded over memories of some great Canadiens teams from the 1970s.
To fill out the program, Sherman’s performing Beethoven’s Opus 109 sonata, and he’ll tell you in his opening remarks why he chose this piece.
If you want to see how a human might perform this piece, Russell Sherman’s giving a recital of all of Schoenberg’s piano music Monday night at the Mannes School Concert Hall in Manhattan. It’s part of the Institute and Festival of Contemporary Performance’s annual spring festival.
If you want a primer on what’s so great about Schoenberg–and what’s so bad–you can do worse than this:
Schoenberg scholarship has only recently started addressing the problems that Gould and Menuhin brought up here over five decades ago. It just goes to show you how theorists’ focus on post-tonal coherence, and musicologists’ obsession with finding links to the classical-music past, has held us back from really getting at how this music sounds.
The open-mindedness that Menuhin displays is striking. So is the clarity of both performers’ descriptions of the music; their no-nonsense approach lets their insights shine through. This is a master class on how to talk about “difficult music” without pretension and with depth.
After a six-minute debate on the merits of Schoenberg’s Violin Fantasy, they play it. Look who’s got his part memorized:
Mark Likes Music 