Schoenberg Septet

I heard a wonderful afternoon concert at the Graduate Center of CUNY.  The main reason I went was to hear the Schoenberg Suite Op. 29 for piano, three strings, and 3 clarinets (E-flat, B-flat, and bass).   This is an absolutely fascinating work, one of my favorites by Schoenberg, and virtually never performed.   It moves at a mercurial pace, with an incredible density of ideas and textures, and features the very quirky, disjunct "dance" rhythms from Schoenberg's middle "neoclassical"  period.  Schoenberg makes a lot out of contrasting the group of three strings with the group of three clarinets; the stage was set up with the two groups facing each other (and the piano behind them). The performers were a nice mix of distinguished new music veterans (Ursula Oppens, Fred Sherry, and Charles Nedich) and some young new music virtuosos.  I think it would probably take a hundred rehearsals to properly balance every detail and nuance in this very dense score, but the players played with convincing musicality and commitment, and a lot of it came through.
Fred Sherry's introductory talks were great fun; he started off by simply saying "Arnold Schoenberg" in such a way as to introduce a spontaneous round of applause from the audience; that's not the usual audience reaction to his name, to say the least.
The concert began with a quartet for piano, violin, cello and clarinet by Hindemith, dating from 1938.   I usually find Hindemith from that period to be somewhat generic and bland, but this piece has some interesting moments, and my ears were more attuned to Hindemith, having heard his "Four Temperaments" from the same period two nights before.
It's not every afternoon that you get to hear Schoenberg's Septet!   Many thanks to my friend Richard who alerted me to the concert.   It's worth noting that it becomes increasingly more difficult to find out what's going on in the classical musical world in New York.   Time Out magazine used to list almost everything; then, a little while back, they trimmed the list to selected events.   As of this week, the classical music listings are gone, except for a few selected highlights.   Many other possible sources in print  are highly selective, like the NY Times and the New Yorker.  No one wants to waste precious print space on being inclusive, and no one on line that I can find seems to be picking up the slack in a reliable way, though the website "New York Classical Review" does a pretty good job.

It makes me nostalgic for the good old days when I would receive my monthly New York New Music calendar, with all the events conveniently listed on one big page.