Schoenberg a la Los Angeles

Arnold Schoenberg was one of Los Angeles’ most famous emigres. He moved here at age 60 in 1934 and remained until his death in 1951. Although he wrote some important music in America, his main influence on local musical life was through his teaching and his presence, because his music wasn’t heard all that much. In fact, we are still trying to put together the pieces of his effect on us, what with the Schoenberg family busily dismantling the Schoenberg Institute at USC and packing their father’s mementos and papers for Vienna, the institute’s new home.

These new recordings--from our two most prominent local conductors using overseas’ orchestras and featuring music made in Los Angeles--only continue to muddy the waters.

Salonen’s recording is a strange one, offering chamber pieces blown up to orchestra size and then played with chamberlike clarity. “Transfigured Night,” which still hangs on the dying embers of the 19th century, keeps the night temperature on the cool side, the atmosphere crisp and crystalline, although there are taffy pulls in the tempos. The Second String Quartet was Schoenberg’s entry, a few years later, into the brave new world of 20th century atonality, and the final version of its arrangement for string orchestra comes from his Hollywood days. It is seldom heard, and played with force here, but the music gains little from the big-screen effect.

Mauceri offers some examples of Schoenberg attempting to write in a more relaxed L.A. manner than in his heady, expressionistic Vienna and Berlin days (although there were heady L.A. days, as well). Relaxed isn’t all that relaxed, of course, in the Chamber Symphony No. 2, the Suite for String Orchestra and the Theme and Variations, which had originally been written for school bands. Mauceri is not relaxed, either, but he is direct and expressive, and these are agreeable performances of second-level but still wonderful Schoenberg.

Not agreeable, however, is the cover, with its cheap colorizing of an irresistible photo of Schoenberg playing Ping-Pong in summer whites on his back lawn. It was never easy for Schoenberg in Hollywood. It still isn’t.