The Five Piano Pieces op. 23 are a transitional work in which Schönberg made the decisive step from free atonal music to composition based on tone rows, which however did not yet necessarily have to contain all twelve chromatic tones.

Begun in 1920 as a contribution to a memorial album for Debussy, the cycle was completed – now as an independent work – only in 1923. The most famous piece in it is certainly no. 5, “Waltz”, an ironic playing with genre traditions that at the same time is a swif...