In Vienna’s Leopoldstadt, 150 years ago today, was born one of the 20th century’s defining figures, Arnold Schoenberg. The Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin is paying homage with an all-Schoenberg program this evening by the Boulez Ensemble, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Chamber Symphony, Op. 9, and Pierre lunaire (with Mojca Erdmann as the “reciter”) — the latter having been first performed in 1912 just a few km from the Boulez Saal.
Here’s my program essay (you can find my colleague Wolfgang Stähr’s excellent contribution in German here):
It was exactly 150 years ago, on September 13, that Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg was born in Vienna. (His birthday fell on a Sunday in 1874, though the triskaidekaphobia-stricken composer did die on Friday 13th nearly 77 years later.) Yet even from this distance in time, Schoenberg’s name continues to strike its own superstitious fear among those conditioned to reject his music even without listening to it.
Filed under: music history, Pierre Boulez Saal, Schoenberg
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 