Pierrot Portraits
Works by Beach, Korngold, Schoenberg, Musgrave et al
Claire Booth (soprano); Ensemble 360
Onyx ONYX4246 60:09 mins
Clip: Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 – III. Der Dandy (from Pierrot Portraits)
‘An absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary for ever’ declared Stravinsky of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. He might well have said the same of Schoenberg’s Three Times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire.
Over a century since its premiere the unshakeable frisson of modernism clings to it still, even if the poetry as translated by Hartleben seems feverishly hyperventilated today. Claire Booth has already gilded the Schoenberg anniversary year with a compelling album of songs back in May.
Now she turns to Pierrot Lunaire and contextualises it in Pierrot Portraits with a prefatory sequence that opens with Schumann’s obsessing depiction from Carnaval, enlists songs by Schoenberg’s contemporaries and smuggles in Thea Musgrave’s vividly-drawn eight-movement trio, a quicksilver, voiceless scena complete with two interrupted serenades and commedia dell’arte knock-about.
Bringing the enterprising ‘vorspiel’ to an inspired close is a transcription for cello and piano of the Tanzlied des Pierrot from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, ravishingly played by Gemma Rosefield and Tim Horton.
An absorbed and absorbing account of Pierrot Lunaire is the main event. Schoenberg insisted that the vocalist should stick closely to the score, and Booth is scrupulously attentive. No detail escapes her. Confiding, conversational, anguished, enraptured, she inhabits the piece whose instrumental filigree is perfectly judged by the conductorless Ensemble 360.
From the delicate, perfumed intoxication of ‘Mondestrunken’ to the skittish cabaret-inflected ‘Gemeinheit’, Pierrot Portraits is nothing short of a triumph! Paul Riley