CLASSICAL
The Seattle Youth Symphony continues its 70th Anniversary Season with two can’t-miss
Nobody Has a Neutral Reaction
winter programs.
Tickets: $10-$40
A Late-Night Performance of Pierrot Lunaire in Benaroya’s Lobby
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Reserve your seats today!
www.syso.org 206.362.2300
By Jen Graves
n the history of music, the rumble reviewer wrote, “There were other composiin the jungle of Paris in 1913 was tions, also said to be musical, associated with the uproarious premiere of The it on the program” (emphasis mine). More Rite of Spring, with music by Igor critical response from New York: “To many Stravinsky and dance by Vaslav Nijinsky, the music is an indelicate sort of intolerable which has become a fetish object whose spirit ugliness, lacking in the first elements that has departed it. The music is performed, re- make music. To others it was the evangel of corded, and soundtracked so regularly that it a new art, tidings of great joy.” is now both familiar and revered, the subject Stravinsky called Pierrot “the solar of scholarly conferences such as the recent plexus as well as the mind of 20th-century one at the University of North Carolina— music.” But when WNYC broadcast the first “Reassessing the Rite”—written about by recording of it years later, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia hated it so much, Alex Ross in the New he called in and had it takYorker, who sums up con[untitled]: Pierrot Lunaire temporary opinion that it en off the air. Fri Feb 15 at Benaroya Hall was not so much the muUnderneath all the seattlesymphony.org sic of Stravinsky but the drama is the continuo “raw stomp of Nijinsky’s of Pierrot’s lasting inchoreography” that was “the main cause of fluence. It has inspired Stravinsky, Ravel, the bedlam.” “Still,” Ross writes, “the Rite Boulez, Björk. Its innovative instrumental remains incomparably vital.” Maybe not so lineup—the first chamber ensemble to mix incomparably. The year before the premiere strings and woodwinds with piano—became of the Rite, a piece by Arnold Schoenberg the basis of new-music groups and so popucalled Pierrot Lunaire drew the line of mod- lar that it’s referred to simply as “the Pierrot ernism even more starkly—and Pierrot has ensemble.” It continues to generate new never graduated into acceptance. Nobody has interpretations, most recently Pierrot Luna neutral reaction to the aire: The Butch Dandy, eccentric Pierrot. Seattle a German film version with a transgender Symphony is featuring bent (in post-production, it in a new series of latenight lobby concerts of IMDb states). unfamiliar works—more Schoenberg wrote it at on this in a moment—in the height of his expresFebruary. sionist period, before he invented the 12-tone sysPierrot is the seething, tem but had ventured far expressionistic melointo atonality, or the lack drama of the mad wanderings of a moonstruck of a key. Pierrot came Pierrot, a version of the three years after Erwarcharacter from the Italtung, the already pretty ian commedia dell’arte wild 30-minute mad scene tradition. It’s a male Seattle Opera presented role sung by a woman, in 2009. And some say the part calling for a Pierrot takes atonality to SHANA CLEVELAND soprano. “Black giganits limit, pointing out that tic butterflies killed the SCHOENBERG His Pierrot Schoenberg wrote only a shining sun,” he-and-she Lunaire is a seething expressionistic single piece between 1912 sings, in a cycle of poems melodrama. It “disrupted families” and 1920, having traveled with titles including “Be- and “severed lifelong friendships.” so far into the abyss. heading,” “Vulgarity,” Because Schoenberg “A Faded Laundress,” and “O Ancient Scent was a numerologist and Pierrot was his Opus from Fabled Times.” But it’s not singing 21, he adapted “thrice-seven” of the 50 poems exactly. Schoenberg invented a style called from Albert Giraud’s 1884 Pierrot Lunaire Sprechstimme, or sing-speaking, which the cycle. He littered the piece with seven-note first American singer to tackle the piece de- motifs. The ensemble with conductor is seven scribed as “something between a croon and people. a moan.” His instructions? That the musicians per“The most ear-splitting combination of form with a “light, ironical, satirical tone.” tones that ever desecrated the walls of a Ber- The singer should not “interpret.” All of lin concert hall,” one critic wrote at the Berlin which makes for an uncanny 40 minutes or so. world premiere on October 16, 1912. There As mentioned, February’s Pierrot concert was whistling and at least one person laugh- is the continuation of Seattle Symphony’s new ing and jeering. Yet another witness declared series of late-night concerts in Benaroya’s lobit “an unqualified success.” by. The first, in October, sold out, and it was It tore New York down the middle when it great. The musicians were all on the floor of arrived nine years later, at the (wonderfully the lobby, and the audience wandered at will named) Klaw Theatre. It “disrupted families, between different floors to sample different severed lifelong friendships, incited critics to acoustics, stretched out on pillows, lined the unbrotherly remarks about one another, and stairs, perched on stools sipping drinks. This filled whole pages in the Sunday music sec- is your new symphony, courtesy of new music tions of the newspapers,” Lawrence Gilman director Ludovic Morlot and new executive diwrote. The New York Times’ morning-after rector Simon Woods. It breathes! Q
January 13, 2013 Stephen R. Radcliffe, SYSO Music Director
Adina Aaron, Soprano Soloist
3:00pm at Benaroya Hall
Chabrier España
Shostakovich
· Symphony No. 5 in d minor, Op. 47 · Wagner Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde & Wesendonck Lieder ~ Featuring soprano soloist Adina Aaron
February 10, 2013 2:00pm at Town Hall
“The Heron and the Salmon Girl”
A world premiere opera in one act presented by SYSO and the Seattle Opera. Music by Eric Banks ~ Libretto by Irene Keliher Tickets at seattleopera.org/OurEarth
TITO BEVERIDGE
FOUNDER AND MASTER DISTILLER
ROSCOE
DISTILLERY DOG
WINTER 2012
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