Piano Concerto (Schoenberg)

Piano Concerto (Schoenberg)

Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942) consists of four interconnected movements: Andante (bars 1–175), Molto allegro (bars 176–263), Adagio (bars 264–329), and Giocoso (bars 330–492) (Alegant 2002–2003, 74). It features use of the twelve-tone technique and only one tone row, though he does at points take some liberties with the permutation of the row. The opening melody of the concerto is thirty-nine bars long and presents all four modes of the tone row in the following order: basic set, inversion of retrograde, retrograde, and inversion. Both of the inversions are transposed.

The manuscript contains markings at the beginning of each of the four movements, suggesting an autobiographical connection between this work and the composer. The markings are "Life was so easy", "Suddenly hatred broke out", "A grave situation was created", and "But life goes on", each matched with a suitable expression in the music. These markings were not included in the final published version, as Schoenberg disapproved of this kind of fixed musical interpretation: they were to guide his composition of the work, and not to provide a programmatic reference for the listener.

Lou Harrison said, "One of the major joys ... is in the structure of the phrases. You know when you are hearing a theme, a building or answering phrase, a development or a coda. There is no swerving from the form-building nature of these classical phrases. The pleasure to be had from listening to them is the same that one has from hearing the large forms of Mozart. ... This is a feeling too seldom communicated in contemporary music, in much of which the most obvious formal considerations are not evident at all. ... The nature of his knowledge in this respect, perhaps more than anything else, places him in the position of torch-bearer to tradition in the vital and developing sense" (Miller and Lieberman 1998, 22).

The composition is around 20 minutes long. Its first performance was given February 6, 1944 at NBC Orchestra's Radio City Habitat in New York City, by Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, with Eduard Steuermann at the piano (Anon ).