Schoenberg's laboratory

Arnold Schoenberg was the greatest musical innovator of the 20th century. According to pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, each new piano piece of his heralded a new phase: on the piano, Schoenberg developed compositional techniques that he then applied in other works. This imaginative program pulsates with the spirit of those innovations, interwoven with refreshing work from other composers. Aimard, leading authority on modern piano music, sheds light on his repertoire choices. A unique opportunity to hear Schönberg’s complete piano oeuvre, at the very highest level.

Schoenberg’s originality is clearly not reflected in his titles, which are all rather straightforward and functional. But his notes were without exception groundbreaking. The set of three pieces for solo piano Drei Klavierstücke (1909) is one of the earliest examples of atonality, and in Suite für Klavier (1921) and Fünf Klavierstücke (1920-23) Schönberg applied his twelve-tone technique for the first time. Aimard combines them with music by Schönberg’s antipode Igor Stravinsky, the American lone wolf Charles Ives, and Ferruccio Busoni, with whom Schönberg corresponded about his compositional techniques. Aleksandr Skrjabin experimented with chromaticism in his own unique way, and the modernist Nikolay Roslavets has been called ‘the Russian Schönberg’.