English Texts Archive

Nuria Schoenberg Nono talks about her life with Luigi „Gigi“ Nono

This Interview with Nuria Schoenberg Nono about her husband Luigi „Gigi“ Nono was made on September 28, 2024 in Venice.

Nuria Schoenberg Nono having a walk on the Giudecca, Venice — Nuria Schoenberg Nono 2024 | ©Max Nyffeler

Nuria Schoenberg Nono, when did you meet Luigi Nono?

I’m very bad with dates, but this I remember exactly. It was 1954 in Hamburg. He came to the premiere of the opera Moses und Aron by my father, Arnold Schönberg.

How did he come up with the idea of going to Hamburg?

Gigi already knew my father’s music, and I think the conductor Hermann Scherchen gave him a ride. Since it was a premiere, three years after my father’s death, my mother also came from Los Angeles. Gigi was already well known in Germany at the time; a good ten of his works premiered there between 1950 and 1954.

Paul Dessau’s Wild “Lanzelot”

The first recording of Paul Dessau’s opera “Lanzelot”, based on a production in Weimar 50 years after its premiere in Berlin, introduces us to a politically rambunctious, often-entertaining opera from ’60s East Germany.

by Ralph P. Locke

Nuria Schoenberg Nono remembers: Arnold Schoenberg in private

Nuria Schoenberg Nono paints a portrait of Arnold Schönberg the family man, which is radically different from the familiar image of Schönberg the twelve-tone revolutionary. An interview by Max Nyffeler.
Deutsche Fassung

Nuria Schoenberg Nono in Venice. Photo: © Max Nyffeler 2024

Nuria Schoenberg Nono, you were born in 1932, and just two years later your parents emigrated to America to escape the Nazis. You spent your childhood and youth in Los Angeles. What was your experience of your father then, in public and in private?

He was hardly known to the general public. We were emigrants, and his music was foreign to the Americans. In Los Angeles, someone might say to him: “Ah, I know who you are. You are the father of Ronny, who won the tennis tournament.” Granted, he was a professor at the university, but he was no god. In Europe, it was different. When I went to Hamburg in 1954 for the posthumous premiere of his opera Moses und Aron, I experienced the strangest things. People came up to me and said, “Oh, you’re Schönberg’s daughter. May I touch you?”

Awakenings, an Opera by Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker (b. 1954) is one of America’s most prominent and successful composers. Early on, he was an improvising pianist for the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance; he received compositional instruction from Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt. He has won many awards, including a Guggenheim. Over a dozen works have been released on recordings and much praised by critics.

Arnold Schoenberg: Religion as Protection and Place of resistance

The Commitment to Judaism in the works of Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg (Photo: Florence Homolka)

The opera Moses und Aron is undoubtedly a high point not only in Arnold Schoenberg’s oeuvre, but also in the respectable series of works that deal with religious themes in the 20th century. In its portrayal of the impossibility of expressing the idea of a God who cannot be imagined in words and images, the work is also – seen from the vantage point of our profane present – a frighteningly topical parable for the media age, in which truths are believed especially when they are clothed in colorful images, words and sounds.

Joseph Horowitz: Dvorak’s Prophecy

Joseph Horowitz’s new book, Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music, asks refreshing questions and offers practical suggestions.
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For several years, newspapers and social media have drawn attention to the relative absence of African-Americans within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and within the list of nominees (and hence winners) for the Oscars. As a result, some progress is beginning to be made. A similar challenge, but regarding the classical-music industry, has been presented by music critic Joseph Horowitz over the past two decades in a series of articles, books, and festivals

Who is Samuel Adler?

In his old homeland of Germany, Samuel Adler was almost forgotten. But in recent times, his name has reappeared here and there in concert programs. Some of his works were performed at the Konzerthaus Berlin on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2018, and a portrait programme about him from 2021 can be found in the Deutschlandfunk (DLF) media library. He was 93 years old at the time and had just completed his seventh symphony. He wrote it without a commission, „just for myself“. It was premiered in 2022 in Frankfurt/Oder by the Brandenburg State Orchestra, which has already released his Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 as well as a piano and violin concerto on CD (LINN Records).

„Who is Samuel Adler?“ weiterlesen

On Luigi Nono’s late work:
Another world – but which one?

Luigi Nono 1979 | Foto Fernando Pereira 1979, Wiki

The ten-minute orchestral piece A Carlo Scarpa, architetto, ai suoi infiniti possibili (1984) is a prime example of Luigi Nono’s late work. The title („For Carlo Scarpa, architect, for his infinite possibilities“ or also: „for his possible infinities“) is a personal homage. Nono remembered in this work his friend, the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, who died in faraway Japan in 1978 and whose architectures are characterized by a special sensitivity in their handling of space and the materials used.

The Dickinson Collection:
Robert and Clara Schumann

The Dickinson Collection consists of autographs and printed scores, manuscripts, letters of Robert and Clara Schumann and others, as well as some personal memorabilia of Clara’s. The musicologists Jürgen Thym and Ralph P. Locke, who discovered the precious collection more than 45 years ago in a cottage at Conesus Lake in Upstate New York, describe in the following essay the circumstances of their find.

The anti-Semitism in the cultural sector

The following text on anti-Semitism in the cultural sector was published under the title „Nach dem 7. Oktober 2023“ in the February 2024 issue of the Schweizer Musikzeitung (SMZ).

Political topics in a music magazine should be avoided, as they only cause controversy and distract from the music. This one is an exception – well justified, in my opinion, because it deals with an event that touches on the core of our cultural understanding: the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023, with over 1200 victims and our reactions to it.