In a 2013 clip, an interviewer asks the star pianist Daniil Trifonov about his typical workday. Trifonov answers that he’d been waking up every morning to the sound of Schoenberg’s Op. 11 in his head, and so he’ll start his day going immediately to the piano to play it. He then plays a snippet of the first movement beautifully, a micro-performance that has always stayed with me. It has been a reminder that Schoenberg’s music, usually most famous for its dissonance and for its forbidding technique, can be deeply felt, even an object of subconscious obsession. Pollini’s 1975 performance of Schoenberg’s piano music communicates a similar sense of depth. His performance of Op. 19 No. 6, for example, is full of remote, icy beauty, cave-like stillness. Performances like this are a reminder of the human face that can be veiled behind Schoenberg’s difficult creations.