As well as being one of the landmarks of musical modernism, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is often cited as one of the precursors of late 20th-century music theatre. But defining what kind of work it really is, and therefore how it should be presented, is not straightforward. These expressionist settings of 21 poems by Albert Giraud (sung in German translations from French) certainly do not add up to a fully fledged theatre piece, even though at their first performance in Berlin in 1912 the soloist was alone on stage dressed in a Pierrot costume, with the instrumentalists hidden behind a screen, but also it’s much more than a straightforward song cycle.
Performers of Schoenberg’s score have plenty of theatrical scope for their interpretations, but visually at least for their performance at the Spitalfields music festival, the Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea and the Hebrides Ensemble adopted a relatively restrained approach. Lamprea was dressed severely in black, and a series of abstract paintings by the Glasgow artist Kirsty Matheson, inspired by each of the 21 movements of Schoenberg’s cycle, were displayed at the back of the hall.
