Educational Media Reviews Online

The 5 Orchestral Pieces, op. 16, by Schoenberg mark a major watershed in his musical direction. Together with the 3 Piano Pieces, op. 11, and the monodrama Erwartung (all written in 1909), the composer made a formal break with the tonal structure of the past, and began experimenting with a new musical organization centered on atonality. This video presentation of op. 16, directed by Frank Scheffer for Dutch television, is an attempt to understand the driving musical and psychological forces behind the work.

The program itself consists of 2 parts. In the first part, the formidable trio of Michael Gielen, Charles Rosen and Carl E. Schorske examine each of the 5 pieces and provide their valuable insights into op. 16's creation and organization. Gielen and Rosen are both renowned for their knowledge of early 20th-century composers, while Schorske is a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar known for his work on Austrian Modernism; of which Schoenberg and his colleagues Berg and Webern were the movement's foremost musical exponents. The second part of the tape features Gielen conducting the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra while Fantasia-like video montages (one for each piece) based on the discussions in Part One, parade across the screen. My favorite montage is the one created for the third piece, entitled "Colours: summer morning by a lake." The seamless interweaving of images from a summer lake scene with those of the performing orchestra perfectly illustrates Schoenberg's concept of "klangfarbenmelodie" (a succession of tone colors treated as a structure analogous to a melody -- New Harvard Dictionary of Music), around which this piece was created.

Though the video montages in Part Two could appeal to classical music lovers of all ages, a working knowledge of music theory is really needed to appreciate the theoretical discussions in Part One. This work would make a fine addition to university and larger public libraries. Recommended to anyone interested in the work of Schoenberg and his early 20th-Century colleagues.