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Home Culture Pierrot Lunaire extends his song without gender prejudices | Culture

Pierrot Lunaire extends his song without gender prejudices | Culture

by News Room
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A few days ago we commented on the beginning of the anniversary of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) following a concert at Auditorio 400 in Madrid that included the String trio op. Four. Five. In the same week we receive a second quote from the Viennese composer, his much more popular song cycle Pierrot Lunaire op. 21which has been presented by the Teatro de la Abadía in co-production with the Teatro Real.

We commented in the aforementioned review about the general secular rejection that this great musical creator has suffered, but everything has its exception and this is none other than this attractive and hot cycle of semi-sung pieces about the figure of Pierrot.

We could flood this happy exception with examples, but I’ll stick with one that summarizes what we have changed in a couple of decades. In the summer of 2003, the Teatro Real hosted an unforgettable performance of Lunar Pierrot by Daniel Barenboim, with members of the Staatskapelle and with the voice of soprano Anat Efraty, all part of a workshop led by stage director Peter Mussbach. They were days, called summer festivals, To the greater glory of Barenboim, he promoted and financed the Community of Madrid, still governed by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón. It was clearly a waste, but some of us were able to enjoy some musical sessions that still vibrate in our memories, including Schoenberg’s piece. And, following this memory, a little book falls into my hands, Pierrot Lunar, which contains the original poems of Albert Giraud translated into Spanish by Luis Alberto de Cuenca, including as an appendix the German version by Otto Erich Hartleben that Schoenberg used. In the brief introduction to this publication, De Cuenca says: “My friend Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón is an enthusiast of the famous atonal work (sic) Lunar Pierrot (…). I remember attending at Puerta del Sol, when he was president of the Community of Madrid, a performance of that work that stayed to live in my memory (…). On that occasion, Alberto encouraged me to translate the libretto into Spanish, so that it could be sung in the language of Cervantes.” That nonsense was not consummated, but the great musical work came to the Real in an anthological version that is positioned as a reference for this one that the Teatro Real itself sponsors with a production that comes from the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and has just been heard in the XV Badajoz Current Music Series.

The countertenor Xavier Sabata, creator and protagonist of the show ‘Pierrot Lunaire’, by Arnold Schönberg, at the Teatro de la Abadía.from Real photography

It is a production that bears the signature and seal of the countertenor Xavier Sabata, singer and stage manager of the experience.

It is well known that Lunar Pierrot admits various degrees of abstraction, starting from its vocal conception, the famous recited song, chanting, converted into a virtue from the need to adapt the singing line to the demands and characteristics of the lead actress of the work, Albertine Zehme. The play, premiered in 1912, arrived in time to influence Alban Berg to make the main character of his Wozzeck in support of the same type of recited song. Schoenberg himself was crowned in his Moses and Aaron with another formidable character, Moses himself, in this complex support of the Sprenchgesang.

But Lunar Pierrot It has many more elements of abstraction, such as Giraud’s ineffable poems in Hartleben’s version, as well as a relentless tour of short pieces, up to 21, that raise the expressive tension without hardly enunciating any argument other than the poetic violence of this summit of expressionist decadentism to which Schoenberg added just the right spice of a Berlin cabaret aroma.

It is possible that this abstract charge prefigures the possibility of embedding expressive subjects of various kinds. This is how the proposal of Xavier Sabata seems to be born, an artistically restless countertenor, who, in addition to singing his version of the piece with ease, embarks on a staging that can have both the aroma of a cabaret and a scene from a science fiction movie. . But Sabata’s proposal, at least in Madrid, is expanded to include a prologue that narrates the drama of Narcissus, via Ovid, which wants to function as a counter-model to the mental disorder of Giraud’s Pierrot. It is an idea that has both a discovery and an occurrence and that fulfills the role of making the session last an hour. I, at least, didn’t like it.

Xavier Sabata, creator and protagonist of the show, surrounded by Jordi Francés -musical director of ‘Pierrot Lunaire’-, four soloists from the Teatro Real Main Orchestra -Pilar Constancio (flute and piccolo), Ildefonso Moreno (clarinet and bass clarinet), Sonia Klikiewicz (violin and viola), Natalia Margulis (cello) – and Karina Azizova (piano).from Real photography

Aside from what is seen on stage, Lunar Pierrot It is a masterful score, five performers with highly specialized music, with three of them doubling their instrument, flute and piccolo, clarinet and bass clarinet, violin and viola, and the need for a top-level concert pianist; Let us remember the aforementioned presence of Barenboim in that role. And that part has been covered with more than enough brilliance by a quintet that plays these things as if they have been doing it all their lives. And the arranger who brings together this group with a wise hand is Jordi Francés, a young director, already associated with the Teatro Real, who never stops earning money with each presence. His version has been clean and magnificently put together, if anything I would ask for a little more verve in the times to talk about the reference version, but listening to it is a pleasure. In addition to the Spanish version of this piece that Gallardón foolishly requested, we are glad for an excellent version in Spanish hands when those of us who have gray hair have suffered waiting for Schoenberg’s music, even this piece of maximum popularity in its production, to be normalized in our borders.

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