While I enjoy an extremely wide and varied musical appetite, Arnold Schoenberg's pre-twelve tone works have a visceral impact on me that is completely unlike anything else I've ever heard or performed. Schoenberg's early tonal compositions and his free atonal works evoke complex psychological and emotional states with such beauty – at moments luxuriously ecstatic, at others intolerably painful…and frequently both at the same time.
On Sunday, February 20 at 3pm, tenor Matthew Tuell and pianist Lloyd Arriola will join me for a program featuring two of Schoenberg's major song cycles. Matthew will perform the 8 Lieder Op. 6, and I will sing Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (The Book of the Hanging Gardens). If you're in the New York area, I hope you'll join us and and see for yourself why I love this music so much.
This has been my first opportunity to immerse myself in this aural universe since performing Erwartung more than ten years ago. Preparing Das Buch der hängenden Gärten has been as exhilarating and terrifying as the content of the songs themselves. Schoenberg's atonal music is treacherous to learn. It requires a leap of faith and complete dedication to mastering intervals and rhythms that at first seem to make no sense, because only after you have deeply internalized them will you be able to appreciate how flawlessly this music expresses the text and mood. Once learned, the melodies and textures get stuck in your head as firmly as any of the tunes from Wicked, but the balance of tension and flow creates a delicious feeling of sensuous vertigo, both for the performer and listener.
While Das Buch der hängenden Gärten represents a significant break with compositional common practice, in other ways it closely resembles the great German song cycles. Like Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, and Schumann's Dicheterliebe and Liederkreis Op. 24, these settings of 15 poems by Stefan George tell the story of an epic love affair from a single character's point of view. As much as I admire them, my voice is not well-suited to any of the earlier cycles, so this is another reason I'm looking forward to taking on this set.
The 8 Lieder Op. 6 are tonal, still very much at home in the world of the German Romantic Lied while pushing the limits of traditional harmony about as far as they can go. They are gorgeous and thrilling. I am really looking forward to experiencing back-to-back these two song cycles created just before and just after Schoenberg's break with tonal composition and am so curious to hear how our audience responds to his evolving musical vocabulary.
Our program will also include Drei Klavierstücke which Schoenberg composed in 1894 at the age of 20. The recital begins with the first piano piece, while the second and third will serve as interludes between the works for voice and piano to cleanse our aural palates. We will conclude with the final duet from Franz Schreker's opera Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound). Composed between 1901 and 1910, Der ferne Klang is contemporary with the two Schoenberg song cycles, bringing us full-circle back to familiar harmonies that flirt dangerously with instability without ever fully succumbing.
Arnold Schoenberg: Sensuality & Decay will take place Sunday, February 20 at 3:00 pm at the Broadway Presbyterian Church. Tickets are available here. For more information, please visit our Facebook event page or call (646) 543-2361.
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