Page 582 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
P. 582
24 June 2024
Late night lunaire: Schoenberg's Pierrot with
Claire Booth and the Nash Ensemble
By Roy Westbrook, 24 June 2024
No clown make-up or costume for soprano Claire Booth this evening's Pierrot lunaire at the
Aldeburgh Festival, but a large moon was projected onto the backdrop of the intimate
Britten Studio, and the titles and text of each of these “three times seven” poems were
ideally clear in projection. This is essential as the work is an accompanied recitation of
poems, commissioned by an actress, not a singer.
Claire Booth and the Nash Ensemble
© Marcus Roth | Britten Pears Arts
The poetic unity, single protagonist, and the dominant supporting role of a piano, make
clear that the template is also that of a song cycle, if one that does not need a singer but
reciter. Famously this is because the text is to be delivered in Sprechstimme, the formidably
precise requirements of which Schoenberg describes in the preface to his score. He
