Remembering Schoenberg: London Sinfonietta gives eloquent testimony to his greatness

Among the plethora of landmarks being celebrated this year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg who, as theorist, teacher and above all composer, made one of the most significant contributions to Western music in the 20th century. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the London Sinfonietta homed in on the essentials of the enduring legacy of a man who is still seen as effecting a decisive break with musical tradition. In its votive offering, wisely entitled “Schoenberg: Reshaping Tradition”, the ensemble presented a programme which gave a vivid snapshot of the ways in which the composer reshaped his inheritance: the compression of musical form to achieve greater intensity of expression; an innovative approach to instrumentation which liberated a whole new world of colour; and, above all, the de-centring of tonality which gave us a radical new way of both organising and apprehending sound.

Illustrative of Schoenberg’s compression of form is his Six Little Piano Pieces, Op.19, given a highly expressive reading by Andrew Zolinsky. The five minutes or so it took to play them passed very slowly with Zolinsky navigating the silences with the same care as the touch which ignited the tiny flames of tones. In the Op.24 Serenade, with instrumentation that includes guitar and mandolin, Schoenberg created one of the most innovative pieces of modern music, one built on a firmly traditional structure. At the heart of that structure, and acting as a hyphen, is a striking setting of a Petrarch sonnet, which was magically sung by baritone Richard Burkhard. Circling that heart is a fantastic whirlwind of colour which belongs firmly to the 20th century; it takes a group of soloists like London Sinfonietta to show it in all its splendour. The composer’s war-time stand against tyranny, the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, is a stylised setting of Byron’s satirical barbs. Burkhard’s performance was far from being stylised, and he caught hold of the satire to make the piece his own statement against the corrupt use of power.

Outshining the splendour of the Serenade was a glorious performance of the Chamber Symphony no. 1 in E major, a work combining extreme compression of form and instrumentation, and de-centred tonality. It was in this piece that the conductor, Jonathan Berman, brought together all the attributes he devoted to the entire programme: richness of sound, refined expressive playing and a terrific feel for pacing.

In addition to the seminal works by Schoenberg there was a piece from one of his iconoclastic pupils, Anton Webern, and one by a passionate apostle, Elisabeth Lutyens; both of them referenced the power of compression. Webern’s Symphony, only ten minutes long, was treated as a loving caress by the players who seemed to be completely enraptured by the intensity of the sound they created. The Six Tempi for 10 Instruments that Lutyens has left us, all twelve minutes of them, were exquisitely laid out across a finely-woven sonic canvas.

The future Richard III boasted that he could add colours to the Chameleon. That is what Schoenberg achieved and it is an essential element in his reshaping of musical tradition. Those colours are now so deeply embedded in our consciousness that it is easy not to recognise them for what they are, or acknowledge their potency in our cultural life. In their brief survey of Schoenberg’s transformative genius, the London Sinfonietta reminded us of that potency.

The evening was dedicated to the memory of Alexander Goehr who died recently; his father Walter had been a pupil of Schoenberg.