Description
The Five Piano Pieces op. 23 represent a pivotal transitional work in Schönberg's compositional development. In these pieces, Schönberg took the decisive step from free atonal music to a new approach based on tone rows, though the rows did not yet necessarily contain all twelve chromatic tones. Begun in 1920 as a contribution to a memorial album for Debussy, the cycle was not completed until 1923, now as an independent work. The most famous piece in the set is undoubtedly the 5th, "Waltz" - an ironic, swift-moving exploration of genre traditions.
