The Eastman School of Music was honored to have Nuria Schoenberg Nono, Arnold Schoenberg’s daughter, as well as Stefan Litwin, an accomplished pianist, to present a lecture-recital for him about his lifetime and career as a musician on Nov. 20.
Nuria Schoebberg was born in Barcelona, Spain on May 7, 1932. In 1933, the Schoenberg family immigrated to the United States. She then graduated from UCLA in 1953 with a degree in Zoology. In 1955, she moved to Venice, Italy with her husband, Luigi Nono. She is the president of the Arnold Schoenberg Center Foundation in Vienna.
Accompanying Nuria was Stefan Litwin, who was born in 1960 in Mexico City. Currently, he is a professor of piano at the Hochschule des Saarlandes Fur Musik and Theatre in Germany and has taught post-graduate courses at a variety of Universities around the world. He is interested in contemporary music and has participated in numerous world premieres. Litwak has also written and published articles on Schoenberg in German and Swiss journals. Both of them held an informal conversation accompanied with personal memories of Shoenberg, a photo album of Shoenberg’s lifetime career, live video footage and also with live music performances. Litwin, conducted the interview with Nuria and also performed some works by Shoenberg.
Schoenberg was born in Vienna on Sept. 13, 1874 and died in Los Angeles, July 13, 1951. Arnold Schoenberg founded the Society for Private Musical Performances, involving his pupils in the presentation of new.
As described in the lecture, Schoenberg once taught a student for free. He saw the potential within this student even though the student was a communist and Schoenberg was against communism. Schoenberg was a painter for a while and no one really appreciated his paintings until in 1903, Schoenberg met Gustave Mahler, who suported him as a musician and painter.
During his lifetime, Schoenberg encountered many difficult obstacles, such as citizenship denial from Austria, discrimination and immigration difficulties in settleman, etc. He settled in Los Angeles in 1934.
He started developing serialism to make possible the more complex structures of the Violin Concerto and the String Quartet no.4. In 1936 he began teaching at UCLA. In 1970’s, the Arnold Schoenberg Palais Fanto was donated to the Univeristy of Southern California by Nuria.
Nuria Schoenberg and Litwak has been doing this kind of interview-recitals in various universities throughout United States and Europe. Their session has given students, espcially those interested in Music very insightful and influential look toward an acclaim musical composer.
Sham can be reached at
asham@campustimes.org.
