PIERROT LUNAIRE (Schoenberg) Berlin 2021 Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim, Mojca Erdmann
Popular Singers in this Opera Recording
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Pierrot lunaire aka Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"
- Composer: Schoenberg Arnold
- Libretto: Albert Giraud
- Venue & Opera Company: Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin, Germany
- Recorded: 2021
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Mojca Erdmann
- Conductor: Zubin Mehta
- Orchestra: Boulez Ensemble, Daniel Barenboim
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Boulez Saal, Unitel
- Date Published: 2021
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: mso.live FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds “Pierrot lunaire” (“Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s ‘Pierrot lunaire'”), commonly known simply as Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (“Moonstruck Pierrot” or “Pierrot in the Moonlight”), is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg. It is a setting of 21 selected poems from Albert Giraud’s cycle of the same name as translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. The work is written for reciter (voice-type unspecified in the score, but traditionally performed by a soprano) who delivers the poems in the Sprechstimme style accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble. Schoenberg had previously used a combination of spoken text with instrumental accompaniment, called “melodrama”, in the summer-wind narrative of the Gurre-Lieder,[which was a fashionable musical style popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Though the music is atonal, it does not employ Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique, which he did not use until 1921.
Pierrot lunaire is among Schoenberg’s most celebrated and frequently performed works. Its instrumentation – flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano with standard doublings and in this case with the addition of a vocalist – is an important ensemble in 20th- and 21st-century classical music and is referred to as a Pierrot ensemble.
The piece was premiered at the Berlin Choralion-Saal on October 16, 1912, with Albertine Zehme as the vocalist. A typical performance lasts about 35 to 40 minutes. The American premiere took place at the Klaw Theatre, on Broadway, New York, on 4 February 1923 as part of a series of concerts organised by the International Composers’ Guild.
Quoted from Wikipedia