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Video on demand: Schönberg's Pierrot lunaire

Watch online on www.konserthuset.seKonserthuset PlayRecorded at Konserthuset Stockholm: Stora Salen, Stockholm, Sweden
Free to view
Performers
Andreas AlinFlute, Piccolo
Mats AllardClarinet
Joakim WendelViolin, Viola
Daniel HolstCello
Stefan LindgrenPiano
Anne PajunenVocals

Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire is a milestone in modern musical history. In this innovative, expressionist melodrama, the text is recited in a cross between song and spoken word. This performance is also visually staged by soloist Anne Pajunen.

No composer stirs emotions like Schönberg. A large part of all twentieth century artistic musical productions have been related to Schönberg, in one way or another.

In Pierrot lunaire, from 1912 - still one of the most discussed works of the last century - he frees the music from traditional harmonic patterns, yet still without the use of twelve-note composition. Albert Giraud’s poetry compilation Pierrot lunaire, with which Schönberg was deeply fascinated, consists of three groups of seven poems. In the first, Pierrot sings about love, sex and religion; in the second about violence, crime and blasphemy and in the third, about his return to Bergamo, where he is plagued by his past.

We hear a moonstruck Pierrot in the Moonlight, musically shaped with complete geniality by Schönberg. This performance also takes on an additional evocative dimension through Anne Pajunen’s visual interpretations. 

Filmed in November 2014.

© Fredrik Sandblad
© Fredrik Sandblad
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