Robert Craft, the noted conductor and widely respected writer and critic on music, literature, and culture, held a unique place in world music. He was in the process of recording the complete works of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Webern for Naxos. He had twice won the Grand Prix du Disque as well as the Edison Prize for his landmark recordings of Schoenberg, Webern and Varese. He also received a special award from the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters in recognition of his “creative work” in literature. In 2002 he was awarded the International Prix du Disque Lifetime Achievement Award, Cannes Music Festival.

Robert Craft conducted and recorded with most of the world’s major orchestras in the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. He was the first American to conduct Berg’s Wozzeck and Lulu, and his original Webern album enabled music lovers to become acquainted with this composer’s then little-known music. He led the world premières of Stravinsky’s later masterpieces: In Memoriam: Dylan Thomas, Vom Himmel hoch, Agon, The Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Variations, Introitus, and Requiem Canticles. Craft’s historic association with Igor Stravinsky, as his constant companion, co-conductor, and musical confidant, over a period of more than twenty years, contributed to his understanding of the composer’s intentions in the performance of his music. He remained the primary source for our perspectives on Stravinsky’s life and work.

In addition to his special command of Stravinsky’s and Schoenberg’s music, Robert Craft was well-known for his recordings of works by Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Schütz, Bach, and Mozart. He was also the author of more than two dozen books on music and the arts, including the highly acclaimed Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship; The Moment of Existence: Music, Literature and the Arts, 1990-1995; Places: A Travel Companion for Music and Art Lovers; An Improbable Life: Memoirs; Memories and Commentaries; and “Down a Path of Wonder”: On Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Eliot, Auden, and Some Others (2005). Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories was published by Naxos Books in May 2013. Craft died on 10 November 2015 at his home in Florida.

Born in Hamburg, the son of a double bass player and his older seamstress wife, Brahms attracted the attention of Schumann, to whom he was introduced by the violinist Joachim. After Schumann’s death he maintained a long friendship with the latter’s widow, the pianist Clara Schumann, whose advice he always valued. Brahms eventually settled in Vienna, where to some he seemed the awaited successor to Beethoven. His blend of Classicism in form with a Romantic harmonic idiom made him the champion of those opposed to the musical innovations of Wagner and Liszt. In Vienna he came to occupy a position similar to that once held by Beethoven, his gruff idiosyncrasies tolerated by those who valued his genius.

Orchestral Music

Brahms wrote four symphonies, massive in structure, and all the result of long periods of work and revision. The two early serenades have their own particular charm, while Variations on a Theme by Haydn—in fact the St Anthony Chorale, used by that composer—enjoys enormous popularity, as it illustrates a form of which Brahms had complete mastery. A pair of overtures—the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture—and arrangements of his Hungarian Dances complete the body of orchestral music without a solo instrument. His concertos consist of two magnificent and demanding piano concertos, a violin concerto and a splendid double concerto for violin and cello.

Chamber Music

Brahms completed some two dozen pieces of chamber music, and almost all of these have some claim on our attention. For violin and piano there are three sonatas, Opp 78, 100 and 108, with a separate Scherzo movement for a collaborative sonata he wrote with Schumann and Dietrich for their friend Joachim. For cello and piano he wrote two fine sonatas: Opp 38 and 99. There are two late sonatas, written in 1894, for clarinet/viola and piano, Op 120, each version deserving attention, as well as the Clarinet Trio, Op 114, for clarinet, cello and piano, and the Clarinet Quintet, Op 115, for clarinet and string quartet, both written three years earlier. In addition to this, mention must be made of the three piano trios, Opp 8, 87 and 101; the Horn Trio, Op 40 for violin, horn and piano; three piano quartets, Opp 25, 26 and 60; the Piano Quintet, Op 34; and three string quartets, Opp 51 and 67. Two string sextets, Opp 18 and 36, and two string quintets, Opp 88 and 111, complete the list.

Piano Music

If all the chamber music of Brahms should be heard, the same may be said of his music for piano. Brahms showed a particular talent for the composition of variations, and this is aptly demonstrated in the famous Variations on a Theme by Handel, Op 24, with which he made his name at first in Vienna, and the ‘Paganini’ Variations, Op 35, based on the theme of the great violinist’s Caprice No. 24. Other sets of variations show similar skill, if not the depth and variety of these major examples of the art. Four Ballades, Op 10, include one based on a real Scottish ballad, Edward, a story of parricide. The three piano sonatas, Opp 1, 2 and 5, relatively early works, are less well known than the later piano pieces, Opp 118 and 119, written in 1892, and the Fantasias, Op 116, of the same year. Music for four hands, either as duets or for two pianos, includes the famous Hungarian Dances (often heard in orchestral and instrumental arrangement) and a variety of original compositions and arrangements of music better known in orchestral form.

Vocal and Choral Music

There is again great difficulty of choice when we approach the large number of songs written by Brahms, which were important additions to the repertoire of German Lied (art song). The Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op 52, for vocal quartet and piano duet are particularly delightful, while the solo songs include the moving Four Serious Songs, Op 121, reflecting preoccupations as his life drew to a close. ‘Wiegenlied’ (‘Cradle Song’) is one of a group of five songs, Op 49; the charming ‘Vergebliches Ständchen’ (‘Vain Serenade’) appears in the later set Five Romances and Songs, Op 84, and there are two particularly wonderful songs for contralto, viola and piano, Op 91: ‘Gestillte Sehnsucht’ (‘Tranquil Yearning’) and the Christmas ‘Geistliches Wiegenlied’ (‘Spiritual Cradle-Song’), Op 91, based on the carol ‘Josef, lieber Josef mein’(‘Joseph dearest, Joseph mine’).

Major choral works by Brahms include the monumental A German Requiem, Op 45, a setting of biblical texts; the Alto Rhapsody, Op 53, with a text derived from Goethe; the Schicksalslied (‘Song of Destiny’), Op 54 (a setting of Hölderlin); and a series of accompanied and unaccompanied choral works, written for the choral groups with which he was concerned in Hamburg and in Vienna.

Arnold Schoenberg exercised very considerable influence over the course of music in the 20th century. This was particularly through his development and promulgation of compositional theories in which unity in a work is provided by the use of a determined series, usually consisting of the 12 possible different semitones, their order also inverted or taken in retrograde form and in transposed versions. Schoenberg’s earlier compositions are post-Romantic in character, written before the period in which he developed his theories of atonality (music without a key or tonal centre). Born in Vienna in 1874, he spent his early career in Berlin, until the rise to power of Hitler made it necessary to leave Germany and find safety in America, where he died in 1951. With his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg, both of whom he outlived, he represents a group of composers known as the Second Viennese School.

Stage Works

Schoenberg’s most important opera is Moses und Aron, of which he completed only two of the three acts. Other stage works include Erwartung (‘Expectation’), a one-act melodrama, the drama with music Die glückliche Hand (‘The Fortunate Hand’) and the one-act Von heute auf morgen (‘From Today to Tomorrow’).

Choral and Vocal Music

Gurre-Lieder, written between 1901 and 1903, is a work of Wagnerian proportions and mood for solo voices, large chorus and orchestra. Other, later vocal music includes A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) for narrator, male voices and orchestra. Solo songs range from the 1909 settings of Stefan George in Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (‘The Book of the Hanging Gardens’) to the cabaret songs he wrote for the Berlin Überbrettl in his earlier years. Pierrot lunaire, a study of madness based on German translations of seven poems by Albert Giraud and using Sprechgesang (words half spoken, half sung), was completed in 1912.

Orchestral Music

Schoenberg’s music for orchestra includes a violin concerto, Pelleas und Melisande (a symphonic poem based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s medieval drama) and Five Orchestral Pieces. He transcribed for cello a harpsichord concerto by the 18th-century composer Monn.

Chamber Music

In addition to four string quartets and a late string trio, Schoenberg’s post-Romantic Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night’) of 1899 is particularly noteworthy.

Keyboard Music

Schoenberg wrote Variations on a Recitative for organ, but most of his keyboard music is for piano, principally in a series of pieces that demonstrate the development of his theories of composition.