Customer Reviews

Serenade Op 24 / Suite Op 29

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This Koch CD let by Robert Craft should be an essential to the Schoenberg discography. Both works are performed with expert musicianship and commitment. They do more than justice to these neglected pieces. The two 'Septet' works of Schoenberg are not nearly as well-known as the composer's famous masterpieces. Yet they are as accomplished as anything he wrote.

The SERENADE, op. 24 is one of the first exclusively 12-tone works. Schoenberg's melodic gift, in terms of his new style, is heard here in abundance. The easily discernable rhythms and thematic shapes--coupled with always interesting and idomatic instrumental writing--draw a new listener in and have no trouble holding the attention. Schoenberg has occasionally been criticized for relying on classical forms and dance rhythms for these works, but the piece itself vindicates him completely. This is immensely satisfying, and yes, charming music. At the same time, this great composer compromises nothing: the Sonnet movement, with baritone solo, reminds us we are in a new musical world.

The SEPTET-SUITE, op. 29 is even more appealing. Apart from obvious difficulty of execution, it is hard to hear why this music is not played more often. The work consists of four beautifully shaped movements. Each one is filled with musical interest, and the whole piece adds up to something musically new and really rewarding.

The Koch CD has demonstration-quality sound.

I have always considered Richard Strauss the ultimate decadent. And as for Debussy & Ravel, they were French, you know. Hardly anything more than a nutra-sweet version of Grand Maître Satie. Apart from a brief period in my late teens I never really cared much for Schoenberg. But as I'm becoming overfed and constipated again with niceties of melodic invention, I find these two pieces pleasantly laxative, in its better moments even downright hilarious. In his wild years, Steve Reich once said "they" (the Americans) won't have the "dark brown angst of Vienna" instead of burgers & soda. How true! This music smells of polished furniture and riding boots and whips and K&K discipline, a very dark brown smell, then. And very fitting for the Old Continent's last days.

and talentless composers. the music contained on this cd is proof enough in and of itself that Arnold Schoenberg was a mediocre musical talent, and turned to composing in an alienist atonal style only after he could plainly see that he could not compete on tonal musical grounds with the likes of strauss, pfitzner, schreker, ravel, debussy, and the like. the man craved attention and success, and most of all, "historical significance" for himself, and therefore devised a system of composing that purposefully could not be understood, thus setting himself up as a pretended misunderstood "genius" in the romantic sense, and claiming that anyone who cried foul regarding his music was simply not sophisticated enough to comprehend his noise. Then he created a rigid mathematical system of organizing tones with no relation whatsoever to natural acoustics or the way human beings make sense of sound. If his ludicrous communistic regimentation of musical tones is not enough to prove that Schoenberg was a musical mediocrity at best, or incompetent at worst, then just listen to the garbage contained on this cd for confirmation.