An Inspiring Link to Schoenberg

Schoenberg, his music and his world, is actively in our midst. Over the next couple of weeks, symposiums related to the composer will be held at a number of places around town, including UCLA and the Getty Center. Southwest Chamber Music plays Schoenberg next weekend. Los Angeles Opera presents, in concert, “Moses and Aron,” Dec. 9.

These events have the potential to draw us closer to a figure who had a great impact on music in the 20th century, as well as on culture in Los Angeles, where he lived from 1934 until his death 50 years ago. And at every local Schoenberg occasion, history beckons, bringing with it the unique likelihood of rubbing shoulders with the circle who knew him or studied with him.

On Tuesday night at the Neighborhood Church of Pasadena, the sense of history was as strong as it could possibly be in 2001. Pianist Leonard Stein--Schoenberg’s student, assistant and the first director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, formerly at USC--played the composer’s complete music for solo piano as his annual contribution to the Piano Spheres series. That there are no other surviving performers with so close a connection to Schoenberg was certainly enough to count this as an inspiring evening. That Stein, who turns 85 next week, has the stamina to undertake such difficult music and make it convincing is, furthermore, inspiring biology.

The piano was Schoenberg’s workshop, and Stein, who is also a legendary educator, made history the subject of his recital by playing the pieces in chronological order. He began with the “Three Early Pieces,” written in 1894, when the composer was 20 and Brahms, whose work was the model for the pieces, was still alive. We then heard some of the landmarks in Schoenberg’s career. Fifteen years later, the three pieces of Opus 11 were the first atonal music published. And the third of those is notable for breaking new ground by not having any discernible repetition, its form being that of fluid, hyperexpressive stream-of-consciousness.

The six tiny pieces of Opus 19 represent music at the other extreme, condensed to bare essentials. In the early ‘20s, Schoenberg used the piano to find his way into the 12-tone technique in the waltz movement of the five Opus 23 pieces, and into Neo-Classicism in the Suite for Piano, Opus 25.

All this music, and two short Opus 33 pieces, were written in Europe before Schoenberg emigrated to America. In Brentwood, shortly after becoming an American citizen, he arranged his early Second Chamber Symphony for two pianos. Stein played that as well with his Piano Spheres colleague Susan Svrcek, and he introduced the performance by saying he never thought to ask Schoenberg why the composer would make such an arrangement. Apparently, he was thrilled enough simply to have been asked by Schoenberg to be one of the performers for the first performance in 1942 at a wartime concert of American music.

But for all that history, Stein does not come across as someone from another time. He was stylishly dressed in the hip uniform--black shirt and slacks--of the modern new music performer. And he addressed these pieces, which he has played his entire professional life, as if they were not just old friends but ever fresh, living music. He may not have the physical dexterity he did when younger, but the clarity that has always been one hallmark of his pianism is still apparent. Best of all, Schoenberg simply makes sense under his fingers.

We are quick to dismiss L.A. as the land with no memory. Stein reveals just the opposite. He appears to have found the fountain of youth not by neglecting the past but by living through it to the present. Think about it: Leonard Stein is the direct link to one of the great figures in music history. Despite all the exhausting, roiling emotions in Schoenberg’s highly expressive piano pieces, Tuesday’s concert was a rare pleasure.