Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire; Phantasie, etc review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 0

Patricia Kopatchinskaja
(Alpha)
The outstanding violinist takes the reciter role in Schoenberg’s modernist classic, with results that don’t always convince

Pierrot Lunaire is one of Schoenberg’s most enduring and influential works, one of the pinnacles of modernism and musical expressionism. These 21 settings for reciter and ensemble of hallucinatory poems by Albert Giraud were commissioned in 1912 by a Viennese actor, Albertine Zehme, but though Schoenberg’s score does not define the gender of the protagonist – it simply specifies “reciter” – the cycle is generally performed nowadays by female singers. Yet one of the most successful recordings of Pierrot features a German actor, Barbara Sukowa, and now we have a version in which a violinist, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, takes the solo part.