Pierrot Portraits

Claire Booth (soprano)
Ensemble 360

For the second of Ensemble 360’s concerts today, they are joined by the soprano Claire Booth for a performance of a venerated 20th-century work, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. With its innovative use of ‘Sprechstimme’ and atonal harmonic language, Pierrot elicited extreme reactions, both positive and negative, at its 1912 premiere. Tonight’s superb cast of musicians have recently recorded Pierrot Lunaire, alongside works by Thea Musgrave, Amy Beach and Poldowski that also complete tonight’s programme.