Volume 42, Number 3 · February 16, 1995
On Playing Schoenberg's Piano Concerto
By Alfred Brendel
After half a century, Schoenberg's Piano Concerto has found its place in the repertoire. It may never become fully domesticated; but why should masterpieces necessarily be popular? It has remained a 'problem piece,' but not one that is stifled by its problems. They keep on stirring, but the piece, far from collapsing under the strain of its tensions, proves its resilience. Though it may not count among Schoenberg's indispensable scores, it has, to this player, stayed interesting while most other piano concertos of Schoenberg's time have faded away, or ended up as pleasant entertainment. It has turned out to be a lighter and leaner work, a good deal less 'Brahmsian' than it had seemed to commentators like Virgil Thomson during the early days of its life. This is owing to the remarkable increase in familiarity, on the part of orchestras, conductors, soloists, and record producers, if not of a very large public, with the intricacies of Schoenberg's style. Re-recording the work recently with the same orchestra and conductor in the same strange studio[1] thirty-six years after my first attempt felt like an act of re-generation—as though I were contributing some continuity and progress to a world which, relapsing into nationalism, fascism, and madness, appears to have lost interest in both.
Feature, 3634 words
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