Arnold Schoenberg performed by Marilyn Nonken

Marilyn Nonken has received much notoriety for her recitals of the complete piano works of Arnold Schoenberg. Of Ms. Nonken's first New York performances of the work, Bernard Holland of the New York Times wrote, "her feeling for these pieces is so heartfelt, so sincere, that one is constantly engaged." When Ms. Nonken performed Schoenberg's Op. 19 pieces, Richard Buell of the Boston Globe proclaimed, "The sky has fallen!" Ms. Nonken gave her New York debut performing Schoenberg's works and has studied them with Leonard Stein, Schoenberg's assistant. More recent have received more accolades. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times wrote, "Ms. Nonken's playing was impressive for its fleetness, gestural sweep and imagination.... It was a heartening week for [Schoenberg], who clung all his life to the belief that someday his music would be celebrated exactly this way." And from Jeremy Eichler of New York Newsday: "Nonken played with wonderful clarity and a probing intensity of focus." The Boston Globe's Richard Dyer proclaimed, "[H]er work was transparent, volatile, chameleon-colored and often playful; Schoenberg smiled. The Gigue from Op. 25 (Schoenberg pouring new wine into old bottles) went like lightning, and the audience burst into applause. Nonken fascinated by bringing romantic colorations to a thoroughly contemporary way of hearing this music." 

Piano works were always pivotal in Schoenberg's compositional development. His Op. 11 is widely acknowledged as the first completely atonal work. Although the harmony eludes any tonal center, the densely referential thematic material binds it together into a coherent and powerful whole. The Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19, are a model of concision. Their miniature forms do not hinder their boldly expressive musicality, from the expressionistic and fantastical first piece, to the sprightly second piece, to the solemn conclusion, an aural depiction of the funeral bells tolling for Gustav Mahler, Schoenberg's only prominent supporter. While composing the Funf Kalvierstücke, Op. 23, Schoenberg abruptly curtailed his work to solve a compositional problem. Several years later, Schoenberg returned to the work, having developed the 12-tone system, a compositional technique that would have wide-reaching implications for the rest of the 20th century. Soon afterward, Schoenberg composed his Suite, Op. 25, the first completely 12-tone composition. The Suite marked another turning point for Schoenberg, in that he began composing in forms associated with other eras. Although structured like a Baroque suite, Schoenberg's piano piece nevertheless found new and striking ways of dealing with musical material and simultaneously refined his 12-tone theory. Schoenberg's last two works for piano, Op. 33a and 33b, seem to return in some ways to the earlier, expressionistic gestures while at the same time are imbued with a distinctly Classical sense of formal balance.

Besides these well-known pieces, Ms. Nonken will also perform two rarely heard works, the pre-opus Drei Klavierstüke of 1896 and Ferruccio Busoni's arrangement of Schoenberg's Opus 11, No. 2. The early pieces are the product of a young Schoenberg still finding his voice. Still steeped in the music of Brahms, who Schoenberg famously defended as the great progressive composer of the 19th century, these short compositions are modeled on the Intermezzi Opp. 117-118. Busoni was a great admirer of Schoenberg's but felt that his piano writing could be improved. He arranged the second movement of Op. 11, adding figuration suggestive of a keyboard showpiece and clarified Schoenberg's cadences through repetition. Perhaps most strikingly, this arrangement elucidates the troubled relationship that Schoenberg's music had with its time.