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Pierrot Portraits

Pierrot Portraits in Bloomington, MN
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Pierrot, the original tears-of-a-clown figure who was also an anarchic trickster, has exerted a strong fascination ever since his creation in the late 17th century, and among composers, that fascination only grew in the late Romantic and modern eras. He was overdue for a recorded exploration, and that is what soprano
Claire Booth
and the
Ensemble 360
chamber group provide here. The program concludes with
Schoenberg
's
Pierrot Lunaire
(1912); the recording is one of several (there is an earlier one by
Booth
herself) to have marked
's 150th birthday, and it may be considered the main attraction.
's performance is a strong one, and if German speakers will note certain infelicities in her pronunciation of German, well, the market is full of German singers who positively butcher English. Some singers turn
into a screamfest; others want to make the semi-spoken Sprechstimme into a set of proto-serialist pitch classes.
lands nicely in between, and her performance is dramatically persuasive. However, the bigger news here may be the relatively rarer Pierrot works she uncovers.
Thea Musgrave
's eight-movement
Pierrot
is an attractive programmatic chamber treatment of episodes from Pierrot's tales. Even less well-known are
Irène Poldowski
,
Max Kowalski
, and
Joseph Marx
, but their engagement with their subject is palpable. Even
Amy Beach
became interested in Pierrot; sample the excerpt from her
Les Rêves de Colombine for piano, Op. 65
, and one of the few complaints here is that there was probably room for another piece or two from that set of five. Pianist
Tim Horton
is effective in that work and throughout: he opens the program with a Pierrot piece by
Robert Schumann
. This album has many potential uses, from classes in the Renaissance sources of Romantic thought to plain old deep listening. It is very nicely recorded at the
Champs Hill
music room. The album landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2024. ~ James Manheim
Claire Booth
and the
Ensemble 360
chamber group provide here. The program concludes with
Schoenberg
's
Pierrot Lunaire
(1912); the recording is one of several (there is an earlier one by
Booth
herself) to have marked
's 150th birthday, and it may be considered the main attraction.
's performance is a strong one, and if German speakers will note certain infelicities in her pronunciation of German, well, the market is full of German singers who positively butcher English. Some singers turn
into a screamfest; others want to make the semi-spoken Sprechstimme into a set of proto-serialist pitch classes.
lands nicely in between, and her performance is dramatically persuasive. However, the bigger news here may be the relatively rarer Pierrot works she uncovers.
Thea Musgrave
's eight-movement
Pierrot
is an attractive programmatic chamber treatment of episodes from Pierrot's tales. Even less well-known are
Irène Poldowski
,
Max Kowalski
, and
Joseph Marx
, but their engagement with their subject is palpable. Even
Amy Beach
became interested in Pierrot; sample the excerpt from her
Les Rêves de Colombine for piano, Op. 65
, and one of the few complaints here is that there was probably room for another piece or two from that set of five. Pianist
Tim Horton
is effective in that work and throughout: he opens the program with a Pierrot piece by
Robert Schumann
. This album has many potential uses, from classes in the Renaissance sources of Romantic thought to plain old deep listening. It is very nicely recorded at the
Champs Hill
music room. The album landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2024. ~ James Manheim