Schoenberg, Ravel:  Christine Schäfer (soprano), Ailish Tynan (soprano), Ulysses Ensemble, (Emily Beynon, flute : Matthew Hunt, Clarinet: Ulrika-Anima Mathé, violin : Alasdair Tait, cello : Noam Greenberg, piano)  Wigmore Hall, London 31.03.2007 (AO)

 

Pierrot Lunaire may be a seminally important work, but to this day it still causes misunderstanding.  But then the Pierrot of traditional drama was supposed to be ambiguous. Accordingly Schoenberg’s setting hovers between different levels of “reality”, straddling speech and singing, art song and cabaret.  It’s that indefinite territory, between defined forms that he’s exploring.  Pierrot is a step on the path towards atonality and the experimental free form of s0o much twentieth century music.  It was never meant to be easy listening and still isn’t, nearly a hundred years later.

Christine Schäfer is probably the cycle’s most prominent interpreter, her recording with Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain setting standards by which all subsequent versions are inevitably assessed against.   It’s brilliant.  However, no performance can, or should, ever be exactly reproduced, and in ten years, Schäfer has  developed in many directions.  When she first became famous, the “whiteness” of her voice was a shock to audiences accustomed to more mellifluous “operatic” sopranos.  Schäfer simply didn’t fit the image.  Yet the remarkable character of her voice is supremely suited to other repertoire.   In modern music, and in the baroque, her lack of heavy rubato and her clear, pure timbre are positive advantages.  She’s helped create a new, acutely sensitive interpretive approach even in  other genres.  Her Winterreise, for example, is astonishing.

The atmospheric Mondestrunken refers to a poet, intoxicated by moonlight (not wine), releasing inhibitions and secret desires.  Schäfer slowly enunciates the cadence Durchschwinnen ohne Zahl die fluten !. In the half-light, a flood of secret inhibitions is being slowly, inexorably released.  So cool and pure is her delivery, that you can visualise the words Des Mondlichts  bleiche Blüten, die weissen  Wunderrrosen (“the pallid buds of moonlight, those pale and wonderous roses”)  The pallid laundry maid in the text, exposing her white forearms as she washes silk  is exquisitely evoked.  Schäfer manages to express purity and erotic excess at once, in subtle nuance.  Violin and cello curl sensuously round the words, lighting and supporting the vocal part. Each member of the Ulysses Ensemble is a well-known soloist in his or her own right : as the cycle develops, each gets to reveal their virtuosity in turn.   In the disturbing song Madonna, flute and clarinet underline the erotic frisson in the first part, while more dominant cello and piano underline the violence in the second part. Cello and piano are particularly effective in Nacht, their deep timbre echoing Schäfer’s voice as she grinds down to her lowest register, spitting out Verschweigen ! like a growl.

Indeed, it is the Ensemble that creates the discordant, disturbing undercurrents in Entauptung, allowing the voice to swirl in its own wayward form.  The frantic thunder gives way to a postlude all the most unsettling because it’s so beautiful after the grotesque  references to decapitation.  Similarly, in Gemeinheit, the text refers to a Schädelbohrer, a drill piercing a bald cranium.   The voice has to keep a jerky rhythm and a delicious, decorative trill on the word Zärtlich (affectionate !). Ironically, it’s emphasised by a lilting piccolo melody, before sudden shrill chords on clarinet remind us that all is not quite what it seems.  Later, in the Serenade, piano, cello and  violin pluck lilting melody while the voice sings of Pierrot “grotesquely scraping a giant bow on his viola” and then sadly plucking a pizzicato.  Schäfer sings the word “pizzicato”, syllable by syllable, like a pizzicato, while violin and cello bow !   Schäfer’s tones may have mellowed, but her accuracy and panache is undimmed.  She’s specially good in the Sprechstimme passages.  The performance worked, though, because voice and ensemble related so intimately.

The Ensemble showed their mettle earlier in Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No 1 op 9.  Schoenberg wanted this programmed with Pierrot Lunaire, and this performance showed why.  Just as in Pierrot, it features interesting combinations of instruments, but what the Ulysses musicians brought out more vividly was its picaresque, quixotic atmosphere.   Later the mood shifts to melancholy, the piano adding adamant emphasis where earlier the flute had soared lyrically.

The programme also included Ravel’s Chansons madécasses, but at the last moment, Ailish Tynan was drafted in to substitute for Schäfer.  Some in the audience thought the substitution was sinister, but whatever the reason, it worked well artistically.  Pierrot Lunaire is such an unusual work that it’s hard to combine with anything else, and I’m glad Schäfer chose to concentrate on it.  She sings this kind of exotic material well, but in Pierrot she’s exceptional.

Chansons madécasses are different, emotionally, though they are scored for the same orchestration.  Here, the sensuality is more straightforward, and much is made of the Madagascan colour in the poems.  What matters here is the perfumed beauty.  Tynan made the most of the wonderful opportunities for lyrical, honeyed singing.  Words like Nahandove and Auoa ! Aoua ! just beg to be shaped with luscious enjoyment.  She was lovely.  Indeed, for audiences more attuned to conventional song and opera, than to Pierrot Lunaire per se,  her singing of these songs would have been the highlight of the evening.


Anne Ozorio