BBC Music Magazine, Paul Riley
Five Stars
Choral & Song “choice” – December issue

… Claire Booth has already gilded the Shoenberg anniversary year with a compelling album of songs back in May. Now she turns to Pierrot Lunaire and contextualises it with a prefatory sequence that opens with Schumann’s obsessing depiction from Carnevale, enlists songs by Schoenberg’s contemporaries and smuggles in Thea Musgrave’s vividly drawn eight movement trio, a quicksilver, voiceless scena complete with two interrupted serenades and commedia dell’arte knock-about.

“Bringing the enterprising ‘vorspeil’ to an inspired close is a transcription for cello and piano of the ‘Tanzlied des Pierrot’ from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, ravishingly played by Gemma Rosefield and Tim Horton.”

An absorbed and absorbing account of Pierrot Lunaire is the main event. Schoenberg insisted that the vocalist should stick closely to the score, and Booth is scrupulously attentive. No detail escapes her. Confiding, conversational, anguished, enraptured, she inhabits the piece whose instrumental filigree is perfectly judged by the conductorless Ensemble 360.

“From the delicate, perfumed intoxication of ‘Mondestrunken’ to the skittish cabaret-inflected ‘Gemeinheit’, this is nothing short of a triumph!”