Name: Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Friends: Pierrot Lunaire
Start: 2023-12-02T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2023-12-03T00:00:00.000Z
Location: South Bank Centre

Organization

Mezzo-soprano

Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Sprechstimme

Instrumentalist

Júlia Gállego

Flute

Reto Bieri

Clarinet

Meesun Hong

Violin

Thomas Kaufmann

Cello

Joonas Ahonen

Piano

Southbank Centre

Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Friends: Pierrot Lunaire

London

United Kingdom

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Friends: Pierrot Lunaire: Poster

Public

Moonstruck Pierrot

Approved

South Bank Centre

Pierrot Lunaire is a work that defies classification. Sometimes it’s described as a cabaret, while The Times called it ‘absurdist dreamscapes’.

Technically, it’s a cycle of 21 songs, written for chamber ensemble and a singer or reciter in ‘sprechgesang’: speech-singing, a style that extends both in directions neither could ever normally explore.

Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire sets 21 poems in German translation from the fantastical 50-poem cycle of the same name by Albert Giraud about Pierrot the clown and his obsession with the moon.

There has been nothing else quite like it, either before or since. Igor Stravinsky referred to the work as the ‘solar plexus... of early 20th-century music’.

With Patricia Kopatchinskaja at the helm, nothing can be predicted – except wide-eyed wonder and first-class musicianship.

Southbank Centre Resident Artist Kopatchinskaja first learned the vocalisations when she was suffering from tendonitis and temporarily could not play the violin.

It proved a resounding success and since 2015 it has been one of her signature works.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Instrumentation