Genius & Invention: Schoenberg, Ives, Cage & Harrison – An Exploration American Primitive & Inventors of Genius Weekend

[image: Adam Tendler (left) Hayley/Laufer Duo (right)]

Celebrating ground-breaking composers Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives at 150 with the Hayley/Laufer duo’s stunning interpretation of the lushly expressionistic Book of the Hanging Gardens, and Ives’ violin and piano sonata. Plus Varied Trio and early keyboard music by unlikely Schoenberg students  Lou Harrison and John Cage.

Genius and Invention traces the pivotal explorations of some of the twentieth century’s most daringly original composers. American musical pioneer Charles Ives and Arnold Schoenberg, founder of the second Viennese school, were surely two of the century’s most innovative musicians, forging paths that defied the musical strictures of the time. Ives wrote Violin Sonata No 4 while  living in Greenwich Village from 1908-11. He is said to have sent scores to Schoenberg, seeking to study with him. Schoenberg responded that the Ives was already an accomplished artist, a true “genius.“

Cage and Harrison were equally notorious; both were students of Schoenberg but took their art in entirely different directions from the master. He described them not as composers, but “inventors – of genius.”

With the extravagantly expressionistic Book of the Hanging Gardens we find Schoenberg at the brink of something new, breaking away from established practice and opening up a new universe of musical possibilities. The result is a lavishly beautiful and sensually evocative setting of Stefan George’s portrayal of struggling young lovers, performed incomparably by champions of the adventurous voice and piano repertoire Dorothea Hayley and Manuel Laufer.

Adam Tendler, a definitive interpreter of Cage, presents early piano works demonstrating the composer’s ear for color and timbre. Harrison in his youth was a harpsichordist, and his suites for that instrument combine Baroque tradition with minimalist innovation. The evocative Varied Trio for violin, percussion and piano reflects his later preoccupation with Asian music. Ives, like Cage and Harrison, includes the sounds of the surrounding world, posing questions as to the very definition of music.

Of Ives, Schoenberg famously wrote: “There is a great man living in this country – a composer. He has solved the problem of how to preserve one’s self and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.”

Schoenberg considered Ives a true musical genius, but we would argue that all four men fit the bill. While their musical paths were very different, what they had in common was the ability to think outside the box, follow their own hearts and find their own truths, undeterred by opposition or incomprehension.

• Hayley Laufer Duo: Dorothea Hayley, soprano; Manuel Laufer, piano
• Joan Forsyth, piano
• Adam Tendler,  piano
• David Fulmer, violin
• Lauren Cauley, violin
• Bill Solomon, percussion

The concert is part of The Village Trip’s American Primitive and Inventors of Genius Weekend.