 Welcome Emmanuel X and welcome, Shai Walsner. Thank you for joining us and thank you for doing this interview with us. We are very happy to have you here. Very nice to be here. Great to be with you. So this is a special moment for us. I mean, it's a special moment because we're doing the interview, but it's also a special moment because Arnold Schoenbeck has just entered the Hitler catalogue. Arnold Schoenbeck's music has become copyright free in most territories in the world in 2022. And this is why we started doing urtext editions of his chamber and piano works. And actually three works are about to be published very soon. The three cycles for solo piano. The piano pieces Opus 11, Opus 19 and the Suite Opus 25. And we are very happy that Emmanuel X and Shai Walsner have joined this project and have provided fingering for these three cycles. So that's very special. Thank you for doing this for us. So Arnold Schoenbeck's music is new to the Hitler catalogue, but it's also still new for most of us because it still sounds new. It sounds modern. And I was wondering what makes this music modern actually? It's about 100 years old. So it's not really something, something recent, but still many people think it's like the most modern experience they can have in music. So what do you think? Why is that? Well, I think there may be, there may be two factors. First of all, I think it is actually great, great music. And in that sense, great music like the great music of Beethoven or Brahms still sounds new and still sounds interesting and challenging. The Rite of Spring is an example of a piece that's, you know, 110 years old and still incredibly challenging and exciting and fresh to everybody. I think the same is true of Schoenberg in that way. Also, there's, there's kind of an aura about him, the idea of the father of the 12th tone system, the radicalization of getting away from harmony, which people attach all the extra musical stuff. I think the name Schoenberg on the program always inspires either some kind of fear or some kind of excitement and love. I think, I think it's both actually. I would, I would totally agree. I would also add that apart from the reputation that Schoenberg has, I think there's something about the sound that he gets from the piano. He loves this dry and sound with not too much pedal. And I often think, you know, it's kind of like the naked sound of the piano in a way. And just like when we see a nude painting or a nude photograph, you know, it's always a little bit startling at first. I think there is a little bit of that in his sound, you know, in the piano music. Nobody else quite does that, I don't think, you know, he's not afraid of exposing the sound of the piano without enveloping it in fancy pedal. Or, you know, he just lets it be as it is. And I think that's part of it, you know, he takes courage to do that. And he certainly had a lot of courage. Yeah, definitely. So how did you feel when you met Schoenberg for the first time, when you met his music? Well, actually, maybe I should start because I'm so much older. My first experience with Schoenberg at all was actually because there was a piano competition in 1974 in Israel. And one of the required works, there was an actual required work, and that was the Opus 11 piano pieces of Schoenberg. I had never heard that music. I had never seen it, but I had to learn it because I was going to enter the competition. And my first attempt at it was actually fairly benign. I realized that some of it felt a little bit like Brahms. Some of it, as Shai said, you had to think about lots of dryness in certain areas and the contrast between that and the maybe the pedal points and the long things was also very interesting. As I practiced it, it became very much second nature. It became a perfectly normal kind of music and very beautiful and very convincing somehow, very powerful. So you felt there was a great composer at work, absolutely. Shai, what about you? My first exposure was actually with the Suite Opus 25 as a student. My teacher at the time made me play it. He said, you're going to learn this piece. And I thought, okay. And I took a look and I thought, this is crazy music. What is this? How is that a gavotte? How is that a minuet? And then there was a switch after a little bit. I thought, wait, this is crazy music. This is great. This is great in a great way. This is so much fun and so original. And actually, at first I thought, oh no, I have to now analyze this and learn all the tone rows and the inversions and this and that. And then I thought, wait a minute, no, you don't need to do any of that. It's just the energy is explosive and every note is incredibly potent and exciting. And it's angular and it's just a terrific thing. And so I actually fell in love with it after a while. And maybe I could also add that my first exposure to the suite was hearing a recording of Glenn Gould playing it, which was unbelievably exciting. And my second exposure to the suite was hearing Shy play it, which was just as exciting and fabulous. And I have to add that the first time, actually, maybe even the only time that I heard it played by someone else on a recital. It's not played very often, which I hope our new edition will change. I hope so. Still, you know, as a student with Manny at Juilliard in New York, I remember going to a concert by the late great pianist Peter Serkin. And I remember seeing the program in advance and I saw that he was going to end his recital with this Opus 25. He was going to end it. I mean, forget programming it, which very few people bothered to do. He was actually going to end his recital and I thought, oh, wow, who does that? And then I went to the recital and of course everything was great, but the suite, I mean, he ended that program like a rock star. I mean, it was like he ended it with Islam. And I'm not kidding. It was so exciting and so convincing and it just blew me away. The end of that gig, I will never, never forget how he played it. And so, you know, for everybody listening, it is possible, you know, you give this music a chance. Thank you. That's fabulous. Because I was wondering, because especially the suite is so complex, at least when you look at it at first sight, it seems very complicated. And I was wondering, do we have to know about the complexity or can you just listen to it as listening to a piece by Brahms or Beethoven? I would say that it doesn't hurt to be aware of what Schoenberg is doing. You don't need to analyze it note by note. It doesn't hurt in the case of the suite, you know, to just know what the tone row is because he has the B-A-C-H letters in it, which is the key. But that's more of a fun fact, you know, it's just, it's an homage to Bach, but it's not necessary for the interpretation of the piece. What is necessary is the same thing that's necessary for interpreting Brahms or any of the great composers. You know, there are phrases and there are gestures. Every couple of notes are incredibly expressive. And I think, you know, you want to establish the character of each movement and to have a certain trajectory to the piece. But that's really no different from interpreting Brahms. And I think Brahms is very, very close to this music. Oh, I think I agree with every word that Chai said, and I think that's true of pretty much all of his music. I don't think he intended the system to be the thing that people listen for. I think he intended the music to speak for itself. So what's your experience in teaching this music? Is it difficult to convey what Schoenberg meant? I mean, how do you act as a teacher? Wow, that's a tough question and maybe not really related to Schoenberg exclusively. I don't know that if you listen to someone playing this music for you, I think really you make suggestions according to the way you feel about music in general. I don't know, Chai, I don't know if I'm explaining it very well. I'm sure you can explain it better, but the same way that you would be able to help with Brahms Opus 118 or Beethoven Opus 110 or not be able to help, which very often happens, that would hold true as well for Schoenberg Opus 11, Opus 25, Opus 23, any of it. I think it's not that different in terms of teaching. Right, no, I do agree. I think the mindset that you want to approach basically any piece of music with is what's going on here. Where is the idea? Is this note related to that note or to this other note? What's the motif? And especially Schoenberg, because it's so polyphonic and so contrapuntal, it can be easy to get lost in the web of ideas, but it's very coherent. There are phrases, like I said, there are themes. And just like in Brahms, you want to see, well, how long is this phrase? Is it four bars? Is it eight bars? And as soon as you map these things out, your work is basically done. And all you need to do, so to speak, is to bring it across. You just need to see how the music functions. And as we said, his music doesn't function that differently from Brahms's and Beethoven's. And so you don't want to convey that to your listeners. Sometimes you feel there are very many indications. There are many expression marks. And it's probably even more true of Weber than it is of Schoenberg. But when you look at these, sometimes you feel like you're doing a roadmap, you know, of this note should be louder, this note should be softer. And sometimes it's just, as Shai says, probably important to see the idea behind the way the phrase flows, the way, what is the intent of it? Is the intent of it to be exactly five against four? Or is the intent of it to be rubato-ish, for example? And so I think, to some degree, maybe one can help with that when one is teaching. Let's talk about your job you did for Heine Lehm. Because Shai provided fingering for the Suite Op. 25, and mainly you provided fingering for the pieces Op. 11 and Op. 19. And I was wondering, is there anything special about the fingering you provided for these pieces? I would say to go back to Shai's point about the idea of letting the piano speak without necessarily a lot of pedal. I think because of that, maybe you have to be quite careful about the notes that need to be held and the notes that need to be short. And you need to do that with your fingers as opposed to doing it with the foot. Probably more in Schoenberg than with certain works of list, let's say. The pedal in Schoenberg is probably more of an expressive device rather than a crutch or anything like that. I think probably in that way, it's good to think of playing a Bach prelude and fugue without any pedal at all. Yes, I think the pedal less sound does guide the fingering because you really want to make sure that things can be legato, for example, without relying on pedal. Sometimes you have to, but still I think that really narrows down what's possible and what's smart to do in this music. At least in the suite, I thought was important and some people may disagree, but because Schoenberg was not necessarily a pianist the way list was, for example, I think it's probably more common to have to redistribute certain things between the hands. Some things that are written for the left hand may be just so much easier if you take them with the right hand and vice versa. Personally, I think he wouldn't have cared. When you play through this music, it looks like somebody who is a non-pianist sat down and really tried to make sure that it's playable, but he's not a pianist. Ligeti is the same way. His music is very hard and you can tell that he really sat down and tried to see that it was playable and then it's still hard. But the same is true for Schubert, you know, I don't know a single bar of Schubert that's comfortable. I agree. I agree 150%. It has to be this way. That's part of the character of the music. Me, I find it immensely endearing that it's awkward. I think it's part of the expression. It's part of the nature of the music and sometimes certain adjustments that really do not change the music but simply make it more approachable. If you change the distribution of the hands, I think in this music is totally okay. So I tried to make some suggestions which hopefully work for people in that direction. I'm sure it is. It's very helpful. And we probably should add that, of course, this is just suggestions. And for anybody studying this music, it should feel absolutely free to say, boy, that was really a stupid idea on the part of the guy and I'm going to do this. That's completely normal and totally personal as Shai says. So just, you know, by no means is this anything written in stone. May I also add that you, Norbert, have been amazing in clarifying a lot of the stuff that I got wrong and making sure that it all got correct. And obviously you are very involved in this and you can play all this stuff with no trouble at all. So thank you so much for your help with this. Well, thank you. Thank you, but that's not really part of the difficulty, I think. I think it's difficult to invent fingering and it's always the easier part to edit fingering and to try it and to think about what could be added here or there. So, well, it's my pleasure. So to close, I was wondering if each of you could just close with a very short statement. Why should we study or why should we play the Suite Opus 25 or why should we study and play the pieces Opus 11 and 19? Well, I would say that the Suite Opus 25 to all our colleague pianists out there, it's a much more effective piece than you think. Many ways to program it in intriguing ways. It can spice up any recital program and it's extremely rewarding to play physically and musically. Yeah, and I think for me, for the Opus 11 and Opus 19 pieces, they're just beautiful expressive music that should be played as much as anything that's normally played. I believe that it's wonderful, wonderful music. Of course, Opus 19 is a fabulous, it's six minutes long, I think. And it's a fantastic program interlude between, let's say, a Mozart or Beethoven sonata in the first half. It's a fabulous opener for a second half. It's incredibly sensitive, atmospheric, beautiful and touching. And I think that's Opus 11 is just beautiful romantic music that can be played instead of playing three Brahms intermezzos. There's no reason you can't do this. And it would be exciting and different. So for me, it's, as one would say, a no-brainer. Wonderful. Thank you so much to both of you. Thank you for doing this interview with us and thank you for contributing to our editions. And I'm really very happy and proud to have both of you in our project. Thank you very much. It's an honor for me, I know, and I'm sure that's, yeah. It's a great, great privilege. As a kid, you know, every music that I consumed for the piano had the familiar blue cover on it. It means a lot to be part of this now. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. See you soon.