Pierrot Portraits celebrates both 150th birthday boy Arnold Schoenberg and a commedia dell’arte character whose roots go back to the 17th century. Do read soprano Claire Booth’s booklet essay on the character’s history from “lovelorn buffoon” to something much darker, a figure “who could murder, commit incest, get riotously drunk… flouting every taboo”. No prizes for guessing that the main work in this intriguing collection is Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Booth’s lucid sprechstimme clearly following the advice of Pierre Boulez, with whom Booth first performed the piece. In his words, “you sing a bit, you speak a bit”. Booth can switch between the two extremes within a single short phrase, the vocal colour constantly changing, alert to the quirkier details in Schoenberg’s instrumental accompaniment. Try her in “Der kranke Mond”: the way that she intones the word “Liebesleid” will give you the heebie jeebies, in a good way.
This work should be unsettling; Booth manages that, but this is also the most sonically alluring, texturally interesting recording of Pierrot Lunaire that I’ve heard, Ensemble 360’s alert, zippy playing adding to its appeal.
The couplings are well-chosen, familiar miniatures by Schumann and Debussy nestling alongside some real rarities. The “Valse amoureuse” from Amy Beach’s Les Rêves de Colombine is delectable salon music, and there’s an idiomatic cello and piano transcription of the “Tanzlied des Pierrot” from Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt. Booth is terrific in Max Kowalski’s “Nordpolfahrt” and gives us plenty of playfulness in “Colombine” by Poldowski. Thea Musgrave’s eight-movement Pierrot has Pierrot, Colombine and Harlequin voiced by violin, clarinet and piano respectively – a nifty idea, though the results are dourer and greyer than you might hope.
