Fierce Beauty Part I

Schoenberg’s Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23, which marks the crystallization of his twelve-tone technique is the launchpad. Other groundbreaking piano methods are heard in Leo Ornstein’s Suicide in an Airplane, distinctive for its tone clusters. Pierre Boulez’s fascinating 12 Notations uses the number 12 as a self-imposed structure with a 12-note row forming the basis of 12 solo piano pieces, each just 12 bars long. The indirect passing of the Schoenb...