From expressionist nightmare to radiant energy: Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire & Schubert’s String Quintet at Hatfield

Queen Elizabeth I awaiting the performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House

Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Schubert: String Quintet in C; Claire Booth, Ensemble 360, Magnus Johnston, Max Baillie, Brett Dean, Guy Johnston; Hatfield House Music Festival
Reviewed 13 October 2024

A vividly Expressionist account of Schoenberg’s influential masterpiece contrasting with Schubert’s late chamber work in a performance full of vibrant energy

Two contrasting masterpieces, written under a century apart, each having a completely different effect on its first performance. The premiere of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin in 1912 would resonate around the Western classical world. Stravinsky and Edgar Varese and their reports of the premiere would influence French composers such as Ravel, the instrumental ensemble Schoenberg used would become a defining ensemble of 20th century music, and Schoenberg’s use of half-speech, half-song would free composers’ imaginations. Some 84 years earlier, in Vienna, Schubert’s String Quintet in C major had just the opposite effect. Written in the last months of Schubert’s life, he failed to interest a publisher in the work and the manuscript languished after Schubert’s death. The work was only published in 1853.

The closing concert of this year’s Hatfield House Music Festival, in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House on Sunday 13 October 2024 paired the two works. Soprano Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 (Juliet Bausor, flute, Robert Plane, clarinet, Benjamin Nabarro, violin, Gemma Rosefield, cello, Tim Horton, piano) performed Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, then the festival’s artistic director, cellist Guy Johnston joined Magnus Johnston, violin, Max Baillie, violin, the composer Brett Dean wearing his viola playing hat, and cellist Gemma Rosefield from Ensemble 360 to perform Schubert’s String Quintet.

Claire Booth has lived a long time with Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, she first performed it with Pierre Boulez shortly after leaving college and studied it with Jane Manning. Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 first performed Pierrot Lunaire together last year and they have since recorded the work and done further performances this year. In June this year, Claire Booth and I talked about Schoenberg, see my interview ‘Expressionism and rigour‘, and it is worth revisiting her thoughts on Pierrot Lunaire. 

‘Claire is a firm believer in the necessity of being accurate when it comes to the pitches Schoenberg notated, and she points out that if you simply sing the vocal line, then the pitches sung prove to be important to what is going on musically underneath. Whatever else Claire does with the Sprechstimme, she wants it to be accurate and she comments that with the majority of other roles in the classical and 20th century repertoire, it is regarded as important that you are accurate but with Pierrot Lunaire, there has developed the idea that this does not matter. She goes on to emphasise that within the bounds of respect for the notes that are written, there is still lots of scope; once you find the notes, then there is lots that you can do with it. Schoenberg deserves that you be rigorous.’

The performers were placed in an arc, with Booth at its centre. The result, in terms of the sound, meant that she was very much primus inter pares rather than being completely spotlit, her vocal line part of the chamber ensemble. Word, pitch and vocal expression are clearly important to her, but the performance encompassed far more than that and ever syllable was accompanied by vivid gesture. Each of the movements became a small masterpiece in expressionist story-telling with Booth’s body language almost as important as the sound of her voice. We were provided with English translations but frankly, if you looked down to read them you missed so much.

Booth and the Ensemble’s long experience of the work together really told. There was a genuine sense of chamber collaboration here, this was a long way from the sort of performance where a star performer gives ‘her’ interpretation accompanied by an ensemble. And the experience told in the way we felt the music as natural and obvious. After all, Pierrot Lunaire was written 112 years ago, in other words Schoenberg’s work is closer in time to Schubert in 1828 than we are to 1912! But that does not extinguish the astonishing feat of imagination that the work is, Schoenberg uses every weapon in his armoury, including inventing some specially, in order to bring out the Expressionist wierdness of the German translations of the Belgian Symbolist poetry.

The opening paired Booth’s remarkable expressive range with an evocatively transparent web of instrumental sound, whilst Columbine was almost a waltz with Booth’s vocals dipping and bowing to match. The Dandy was vivid indeed, with startling moments from Booth in her remarkable characterisation, and from the instruments. The Pale Washerwoman set Booth’s suppressed excitement against the smooth instrumental lines, and ended finely up in the air. We returned to the idea of a watlz with Chopin, the busyness of the music paired with vivid gesture. Madonna unfolded with slow inevitability, leading to the remarkable duet of voice and flute for the sick moon.

Night was dark and spare, strange sounds creating the world of the weird, whilst the Prayer to Pierrot was a story to be told. Theft was almost pure horror, with the performers relishing the way Schoenberg’s sounds echoed the text. Red Mass was serious, full of remarkable colours yet all hell did break loose. Gallows song was almost a patter song (!) with Booth giving a vivid tour de force. Beheading returned us to the sense of the waltz, vividly portrayed by all, creating a sort of mini-opera. There was an eerie strangeness to Crosses, whilst Benjamin Nabarro’s bitter-sweet violin perfectly matched Booth’s soprano in Homesickness, over the top at times but always expressive.

Practical joke was manic, and we were aware of a sense of the modern day Commedia dell’arte in Booth’s repertoire of gesture. Parodie featured a clearly very demanding duenna, whilst Moon fleck  was vivid and delicate, leading to a helter skelter of madness. The cello solo in Serenade gives us an intriguing pre-echo (conceptual rather than musical, perhaps) of Debussy’s 1915 Cello Sonata which the composer evidently wanted to call Pierrot Angry at the Moon. Homeward journey continued that feeling of a serenade, the voice riding over the lovely instrumental textures. Finally, O sweet fragrance gave us an almost delicate drift of sound, evaporating on a question.

The performers in Schubert’s String Quintet are not a regular chamber group but simply a group of musical friends with Magnus Johnston (Guy’s brother), Max Baillie and Brett Dean being regular visitors to the festival. Their approach to the String Quintet seemed very much based on the music itself rather than seeing the work in the reflected aura of Schubert’s death. Whilst writing the quintet, Schubert certainly knew he was ill but it is arguable whether he had a sense of his impending mortality and to interpret the work simply as his final chamber music is perhaps limiting.

The introduction had seemingly all the time in the world, yet eager energy intervened and the first subject as vividly impulsive with strong rhythms and accents, but then for the second subject the two cellos returned to the sense of time suspended. However, this was a performance strong on texture, solo lines like the two cellos in the second subject were not spotlit, and there was plenty of digging in with the bow during the development, a vibrant sound created by five strong individuals, and though the recapitulation returned to the mood of the opening, the coda had disturbing moments. The Adagio definitely returned us to time suspended, though at the opening the long line was disturbed by an insistent first violin, and for the middle section the music turned vividly vibrant with the big tune only rising with strenuous effort. Mystery returned with the opening material, but the ending balanced the sublime and the disturbing. The scherzo was all vibrant energy and joie de vivre, then the rondo finale gave us music that was robust and strong in rhythm with contrasting episodes that were more graceful with hints of a return of the material from the second movement.