Word: webern
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...studying at the academy with one of the great teachers of the 20th century, Hans Swarowsky. The Vienna Philharmonic opened my ears and Swarowsky opened my mind to the treasures of the Viennese classics. To this day, the huge musical arc that starts with Haydn and goes to Webern constitutes 80% of my repertoire...
...next played Anton Webern's Vier Stcke, op. 7, a work the composer wrote in 1910 under the influence of his teacher, Schoenberg. These pieces reveal how quickly Webern embraced his teacher's concept of a completely atonal music, which had only fully materialized a year earlier with Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, op. 11. Webern's pieces, however, already point to a more abstract atonality and are characteristically Webernesque in their brevity and obsession with detail. Schulte and Winn played the faster movements especially well, again showing a real sense of musical unity...
...thinks in terms of music, has infused the text with references to music--from "The Old Rugged Cross," Reagan's favorite hymn, to Liszt's Faust Symphony. And, as a testament to Morris' intellectual horsepower--and showmanship--it is interesting to note that he modeled an entire chapter on Webern's Piano Variations. When three notes were played with the right hand, Morris wrote three paragraphs about Reagan. When the next three notes were played by the left hand, he wrote three paragraphs about the narrator...
...Webern's Piano Variations are mirror variations: Everything reflects. So too, Morris suggests, does everything in Reagan's life. His famous words, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" are foreshadowed in his college days, when Reagan plays a part in Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo and speaks the lines, "This wall is actually a wall, a thing / Come up between us, shutting me away." One of the most jarring moments of Reagan's otherwise happy childhood is when he comes home one night to find his father passed out, drunk, on the snow of their front yard...
Conductor and soloist were once again equal partners in Webern's version of "Ihr Bild." The orchestra played movingly and, for the great climax, Baer puffed out his cheeks, stuck out his neck and sounded totally despondent as he attacked the last two lines: translated from the German, "And ah, I cannot believe/That I have lost...