United Kingdom Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Buddies – Pierrot Lunaire: Patricia Kopatchinskaja (voice / violin), Meesun Hong Coleman (violin), Thomas Kaufmann (cello), Júlia Gállego (flute), Reto Bieri (clarinet), Joonas Ahonen (piano). Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, 3.12.2023. (CC)
PatKop – Flügelnwund for violin & 8 loudspeakers (digital realisation, SWR Freiburg)
CPE Bach – Presto in C minor, Wq114/3 (arr. PatKop)
Schoenberg – Pierrot Lunaire for voice & ensemble, Op.21, Half 1
Berio – Music for clarinet
Violin Improvisation
Schoenberg – Pierrot Lunaire for voice & ensemble, Op.21, Half 2
PatKop – Ghiribizzi (Whims) – excerpts
Milhaud – Suite, Op.157b: Jeu
Schoenberg – Pierrot Lunaire for voice & ensemble, Op.21, Half 3
If there may be one piece that was at all times going to swimsuit the drive of Nature that’s Patricia Kopatchinskaja to the bottom, it’s Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. She states, in an introductory word, that Pierrot has been ‘incarcerated within the jail of modernism, accessible solely to the initiated’ and that it ‘needs to be liberated’. Given the commedia dell’arte origins of the central character, Kopatchinskaja’s clown-like apparel (and face paint) appeared excellent. On coming into, the stage was a (deliberate) mess, newspapers strewn randomly, a modernist canvas on an easel …
There was no formal artist entrance – PatKop was hiding on the again. The entire night mirrored the sense of newness and discovery Schoenberg’s rating should have breathed again in 1912. It’s a place of maximal discombobulation, the place consonance can seem as dissonance (or at the least minus its attribute directionality). The place inherited varieties (passacaglia, canon) sit with the Sprechstimme or speech-song. Lighting was rigorously thought of (the stage drenched in purple/violet gentle for ‘Madonna’, for instance)
It have to be stated, this efficiency made Kopatchinskaja’s Alpha recording sound tame. Maybe it was the cellular aspect – the world of her Pierrot is the stage, and (s)he can work together with performers, sharing a stool, or stroking one other performer affectionately. That recording has intriguing couplings of Schoenberg, Webern, Johann Strauss II and Fritz Kreisler’s Little Viennese March. However right here, it appeared much more logical. PatKop’s personal Flügelnwund for violin and eight audio system was an appropriately surreal expertise. It did sound one thing like Stockhausen maybe and gave this viewers member a heat glow of nostalgia for it! Spatial results had been rigorously achieved and efficient. It was equally efficient to insert ‘additional’ items between elements – readers may bear in mind the Milhaud from PaKop’s final Southbank look, in September this yr. She took the CPE Bach and, in injecting pizzicato as a part of the equation, lightened the music in duet with Reto Bieri’s knowledgeable clarinet.
Kopatchinskaja’s Pierrot is fragile. Projected translations in the back of the corridor helped us perceive the character’s extraordinary, zig-zag journey. Her voice will not be the strongest however has a rare selection, from scream to screech to squeal (‘Der Dandy’, ‘Enhauptung’), from whimsy (‘Colombine’) to charming (‘Valse de Chopin’).
Berio’s Music for clarinet is of maximal eloquence, and there may be surly no finer interpreter immediately than Bieri, who holds the important thing to probably the most magical, practically inaudible pianissimi that talk volumes. However how darkish the distinction with the primary tune of the second half, ‘Nacht (Passacaglia)’ – the textual content speaks, unforgettably, of ‘big, black butterflies,’ and the nightmarish imaginative and prescient was all there.
One should credit score Joonas Ahonen’s very good pianism in ‘Gebet an Pierrot’, complemented by the way in which Kopatchinskaja virtually deconstructed language along with her number of sound, sometimes threatening to shred the phrase in query. And as for ‘Raub’ (Theft), it was the closest Schoenberg ever (unknowingly) got here to rap music – extra so than on the recording, actually. Kopatchinskaja positively threw herself into ‘Die Kreuze’ (Crosses), making herself right into a human cross by way of arms flung out; and the sudden change with an outstanding entrance from flautist Júlia Gállego was completely stunning, as was Gállego’s fuller solo afterward.
We heard a few of PatKop’s Ghiribizzi (Whims) within the earlier live performance, too; just some minutes this time, to remind us of the fertility of her creativeness, earlier than the phenomenally virtuosic Milhaud. Interlude, linking passage, second of enjoyable … one way or the other it appeared built-in with the Schoenberg moderately than disjunctive.
The third half started with the candy violin of Meesung Hong Coleman in ‘Heimweh’ (Homesickness), complemented by the virtuosity of Thomas Kaufmann’s cello within the very subsequent ‘Gemeinheit!’ (Sensible Joke). This was cabaret via a fairground mirror, or maybe via a kaleidoscope. Maybe the purest instance of pure musical virtuosity from all involved – tutti virtuoso, maybe – was ‘Der Mondfleck’ (The Moon Spot), frenzied, virtually exploding out of its personal parameters.
A shadow is solid over the previous few songs, because the music ‘goes house’ (‘Heimfahrt’) earlier than lastly reminiscing about ‘fairytale occasions’ (‘Märchenzeit’).
This was really a rare expertise. Kopatchinskaja realized Pierrot when she was briefly divorced from her violin due to tendonitis, and it’s one in all her best musical items to us. Together with her Music for the Planet: Les Adieux from Gstaad this yr nonetheless casting its shadow (the efficiency was on 5 August and the solar shone), it’s all credit score to Kopatchinskaja that she will equal that in impact. Unforgettable.
Colin Clarke
