Pollini is fantastic with Schoenberg's piano pieces. This chronological presentation allows you to hear the progression from the atonal works to the later 12-tone compositions. Adorno held the atonal works to be the highest pinnacle of expression, and it's easy to see why he was so impressed. I find it amazing to compare Schoenberg and the painter Kandinsky. They were friends, and participated in a joint revolution across types of art, Schoenberg pushing dissonant chromaticism into outright atonality as Kandinsky did the same with painting, pushing Impressionism's blurring of the object to total abstraction. Then, in the 1920s, Schoenberg developed his 12-tone system as Kandinsky developed a parallel system of abstract forms at Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. I strongly prefer Kandinsky's Bauhaus work to his earlier period, while with Schoenberg, I enjoy both, but prefer the first breakthroughs to the atonal. His "Suite for Piano" and other 12-tone works incorporate a pure, Baroque structure, and mark a phase of consolidation. The earlier works, especially, seem to document the dissolution of the ego, and Pollini conveys them as fleeting, fugitive beauty.
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