WEDNESDAY 5 OCTOBER 2016 / 8:30PM
THE SHOE FACTORY, NICOSIA
Drawing attention to contemporary masterpieces in which human voice
takes the lead, the 8th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival
opens on Wednesday 5 October 2016 with the performance of one of the most
emblematic works of the 20th century. Over a decade since the Pharos Arts
Foundation presented the Cyprus premiere of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire
with the London Sinfonietta, the work which has changed the history of vocal
music forever and which has never been performed in Cyprus ever since, will
be heard again: This time by the legendary vocalist Marianne Pousseur who
will join forces with the exceptional ensemble Het Collectief under the
direction of German conductor Robin Engelen. Het Collectief will also
perform Schoenberg’s post-Romantic masterpiece Verklärte Nacht, as well as
Alban Berg’s Pieces for Clarinet and Piano Op.5.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE PROGRAMME:
Pierrot Lunaire is the keystone of contemporary chamber music – the
work that fundamentally altered the course of composition. One of the most
daringly original and profoundly influential works in music history, Pierrot
Lunaire is the work that launched Modernism and pulled music away from the
safe harbour of the past forever. While its roots reach back to the heart of
Romanticism, its shadow falls beyond the horizon, far into the future.
Schoenberg took his title from a volume by the Belgian surrealist /
symbolist poet Albert Giraud, selecting 21 poems which he arranged in three
groups of seven. The poems are based on the naïve character Pierrot, from
the Italian Commedia dell’ arte tradition, and they present various
perspectives on his main concerns: moonlight, love, religion, and death.
Pierrot is a dreamer and a poet, a wistful and human clown, prey to the
moods that swing swiftly from ecstasy to hysteria, ever victim of the
conflict between the real and the ideal. Schoenberg’s evocative and highly
original music perfectly complements the changing moods of the poems: at
times gentle and atmospheric, intensely anguished, wistfully nostalgic, or
with ironic detachment. The expressive range and power of Schoenberg’s
setting of these remarkable poems is astonishing. Vocally, the work is a
fearsome challenge, its text delivered exclusively in Sprechstimme, a
technique halfway between speaking and singing. Years after the composer’s
death, Stravinsky pronounced the work “the solar plexus as well as the mind
of early twentieth-century music.” It is not surprising that after all these
years, Pierrot Lunaire continues to shock audiences with its sheer
originality, and like all great masterpieces, it is a work that sounds
forever fresh.
And while Schoenberg's fame arose from his escape from tonality and his
invention of the serial method, his very first published work, written in a
three-week burst of inspiration in 1899, was ardently Romantic, intensely
sensitive and seeped in traditional feeling. Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured
Night") was inspired by a mystical poem by Richard Dehmel. In cold, moonlit
woods, a woman confesses to her lover that she carries the child of another
man she never loved but to whom she yielded for fulfilment. Schoenberg's
dual – and seemingly divergent – musical influences at the time, Wagner and
Brahms, are present throughout the work, whereas the composer still succeeds
in marshalling a highly contrapuntal and chromatic language that is entirely
his own for the first time in his career.
MARIANNE POUSSEUR Sprechstimme
One of the most iconic and celebrated performers of contemporary music,
Marianne Pousseur appears frequently with ensembles such as the Schoenberg
Ensemble, (direction Reinbert de Leeuw), Remix Porto, Die Reihe Vienna, and
she has appeared numerous times with the Ensemble InterContemporain,
particularly under the direction of Pierre Boulez. The stage version of
Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg, with Ensemble Musique Oblique
conducted by Philippe Herreweghe, has been released on film as well as a CD
for the label Harmonia Mundi France. Her immense theatrical experience has
allowed Marianne to be the actress reciting in symphonic works such as
Psyche by César Franck and Peer Gynt by Grieg, conducted by Kurt Masur with
the Orchestra National de France and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as
well as Sciarrino’s Lohengrin the recording of which won the 2009 MIDEM
Classical Awards in Cannes. For her, in 2004, George Aperghis composed Dark
Side for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, created in Athens with the Ensemble
InterContemporain. Subsequently, in 2008, they collaborated again on Yannis
Ritsos’ poem Ismene which was set into an opera for solo voice. The
performance won the 2009 Belgian critics Award and it has since been
performed in several international festivals. Marianne’s artistic research
on Yannis Ritsos, led her to compose and perform the music theatre Phedre,
based on Ritsos’ poem, and the triptych was completed in 2015 with Ajax.
ENSEMBLE HET COLLECTIEF
Wibert Aerts, violin | Julien Hervé, clarinet | Thomas Dieltjens, piano |
Toon Fret, flute | Martijn Vink, cello
The chamber music ensemble Het Collectief was founded in 1998 in
Brussels. Working consistently from a solid nucleus of five musicians, the
ensemble has created an intriguing and idiosyncratic sound, achieved by an
unfamiliar mix of strings, wind instruments and piano. In its repertoire,
Het Collectief returns to the Second Viennese School, the roots of
modernism. Starting from this solid basis, it explores the important
repertoire of the 20th century, as well as the very latest experimental
trends. The quintet also creates a furore with daring crossovers between the
contemporary and the traditional repertoire and with adaptations of ancient
music. Next to the many concert venues in Belgium, Het Collectief regularly
brings its productions to important concert all over the world, including
The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Hong Kong,
Peru and Brazil.
ROBIN ENGELEN conductor
Robin Engelen has collaborated and led many fine orchestras around
the world, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra and
Stuttgart Philharmonic, Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony
(RSB), Dusseldorf Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, State Orchestra Halle,
and Orchestra Sinfonica di San Remo. In addition, he is a notable opera
conductor who has appeared in various opera houses in Berlin (Komische Oper),
Paris (Garnier), Mannheim, Antwerpen, Leipzig, Kassel, Palermo, Yakutsk and
Seoul. His discography includes a recording of Pierrot Lunaire, which won
the Diapason d’Or. In 2013, Robin Engelen also won the prestigious ECHO
Klassik.
INFORMATION & TICKETS:
Information: Pharos Arts Foundation Tel. (+357) 22-663871 /
www.pharosartsfoundation.org
Tickets: €10
for the concerts. All other events are Free Entrance.
Box Office: Directly from the Foundation’s website
www.pharosartsfoundation.org or Tel. 9666-9003 (Monday-Friday
10:00am-3:00pm)
Educational Activities: The Festival will host a great number of educational
activities, some of them in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and
Culture, which will be open to the public. For more information about these
activities please contact the Pharos Arts Foundation.