Berg / Schönberg / Webern

"A septuagenarian with the energy and agility of a player half her age and the wisdom of maturity in her playing," wrote the British newspaper The Observer in 2022 about Elisabeth Leonskaja. As one of the most important pianists of our time, she combines the musical traditions of Vienna and her homeland in the Soviet Union. And so the Viennese pianist, by choice, on the occasion of the 150th birthday of Arnold Schönberg on 13 September 2024, releases an album entirely devoted to the Second Viennese School. Leonskaja selected jewels from the work of Schönberg and his two most renowned students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, with which the 2020 Opus Klassik winner covers a diverse spectrum: She opens with Berg's Piano Sonata Op. 1, which is oriented towards the home key of B minor in the Romantic tradition. Webern, on the other hand, applied Schönberg's twelve-tone system even more strictly than the inventor himself. In his Variations for piano op. 27 he develops each part on its own twelve-tone series. With this album, however, Elisabeth Leonskaja focuses on the works of Schönberg. The Three Pieces Op. 11 from 1909 belong to his first atonal works, while the Six Little Piano Pieces Op. 19, composed three years later, are already masterful miniatures. Compressed into a very small space, they alternate a great variety of colours, from daring to resigned. Schönberg's Suite for Piano Op. 25 also consists of short individual pieces. Here he combines twelve-tone technique with Baroque dances. Rhythmically inventive to eccentrically humorous, gavotte, musette and minuet follow each other.