PIERROT LUNAIRE & MORE

Allegro  
Adagio  
Andantino grazioso – Trio 
Allegro  
 

When Brahms first heard the playing of Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinettist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had not written any chamber music involving the clarinet. But after a meeting in March 1891 he was inspired – following more than a year of creative silence – to write two major works for his new-found muse. On 24 November 1891, Mühlfeld, the Joachim Quartet and Brahms himself played both the Trio and the Clarinet Quintet at a private concert for the Duke of Meiningen. The first public performances followed on 12 December 1891, in the Berlin Singakademie. For the Trio Mühlfeld was again joined by the cellist Robert Hausmann and Brahms. 

The four movements of the Trio are concise and clear in design, without quite the mystery or the rapturous spirit that pervades the Quintet. However, the writing for the three instruments is unusually closely integrated, intertwined even – prompting Brahms’s friend Eusebius Mandyczewski to write in a letter to the composer that ‘it was as if the instruments were in love with one another.’ Brahms’s technical prowess can also be seen at its most ingenious: the second theme of the first movement is introduced as a canon in inversion, a procedure that can also be found in Haydn, and perhaps this was a nod from Brahms to one of the composers of the past he most admired. As well as the Trio and Quintet, Brahms went on to write the two Clarinet Sonatas Op.120 for Mühlfeld – all late masterpieces inspired by this great clarinettist.  

© Nigel Simeone 

1. Mondestrunken (Drunk with Moonlight)
2. Columbine
3. Der Dandy
4. Eine blasse Wäscherin
5. Valse de Chopin
6. Madonna
7. Der kranke Mond (The sick moon)
8. Nacht. Passacaglia (Night)
9. Gebet an Pierrot (Prayer to Pierrot)
10. Raub (Theft)
11. Rote Messe (Red Mass)
    12. Galgenlied (Gallows Song)
12. Enthauptung (Beheading)
13. Die Kreuze (The Crosses)
14. Heimweh (Homesickness)
15. Gemeinheit! (Foul play!)
16. Parodie
17. Der Mondfleck (The Moon spot
18. Serenade
19. Heimfahrt (Journey home)
20. O alter Duft (O ancient fragrance)

The first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in Paris in May 1913 may have provoked the most famous riot in musical history, but it wasn’t the only one. A few months earlier in Berlin on 16 October 1912, some members of the audience at the premiere of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire were enraged by what they heard. When Albertine Zehme – the actress who had commissioned the work from Schoenberg – appeared on the platform in a Pierrot costume, she was, according to one eyewitness ‘greeted by an ominous murmur from the audience. One could not help admiring her courage, as she went on from poem to poem, disregarding the hissing, booing and insults shouted at her and Schoenberg. There were also fanatical ovations from the younger generation, but the majority were outraged. A well-known virtuoso, his face purple with rage, shouted: “Shoot him. Shoot him,” meaning Schoenberg, not the poor undaunted Pierrot.’ 

What was it that caused such rage? While Schoenberg’s use of Sprechgesang (speech-song) was not new (both Schoenberg and Humperdinck had used it before), its other-worldly effect in Pierrot lunaire is something that must have been disconcerting. So, too, was the sense of disorientation (and unpredictability) of Schoenberg’s music. To listeners in 1912 it’s easy to see how this might have seemed downright peculiar, but to audiences today, Pierrot lunaire is a work of eerie beauty. 

© Nigel Simeone