Can We Go Home Again?

Program Notes

Less than twenty years separates Brahms's last piano composition and Schönberg's first venture into free atonality. Brahms was an heir of the tonal language, and dramatic possibilities, of Beethoven. Schönberg proposed to remove that harmonic motivation.
If you remove the musical concept of "home," what is left? I believe these two works, side by side, illustrate an astonishingly rigorous programme of motivic developments, in which a sensitivity to imitation, distortion, return, and prolongation illuminates a surprisingly similar manner in which Brahms and Schönberg organize the emotional paths of these little piano pieces.
Schönberg’s opus 11 looks ahead, stylistically, to the compositional developments that it succeeded in effecting, but emotionally and dramatically, they feel quite retrospective, as if their gaze is backward at Brahms, the aesthetic precursor, as his pieces inwardly contemplate the end of their own tonal language.

Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
"Four Piano Pieces," 1893
i. Adagio
ii. Andantino un poco agitato
iii. Grazioso e giocoso
iv. Allegro risoluto
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951)
"Three Piano Pieces," 1911
i. Mäßig [quarter-note]
ii. Mäßig [eighth-note]
iii. Bewegt [eighth-note]

By attending this event, you consent to the taking of photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, and/or other digital images or recordings during this event by staff, volunteers, or outside media. Bloomingdale School of Music (Bloomingdale) may use, edit, alter, copy, publish, and/or distribute those photos and recordings in any and all of its publications, including social media and web-based publications, and/or for any other lawful purpose, without payment, compensation, royalties, or other consideration. Bloomingdale bears no responsibility for any unauthorized use of images or recordings by a third party.

Host or Publisher Bloomingdale School of Music