A. Schönberg / M. Neikrug – Pierrot lunaire / Through roses

Here is another project in which two works, performed in the same evening, create new contexts for each other, opening up possibilities for fresh observations and insights.

In Neikrug’s piece for chamber ensemble and speaker, a former concentration camp prisoner relives his experiences in captivity. As a musician he had been forced to play his violin as his wife was murdered. This is a work about the incredible power of music, about its perversion and about 200 years of German music history.

Schönberg’s minimalist, yet nevertheless opulent setting of Hartleben’s translation of the poems by Albert Giraud for Sprechstimme is often seen as defining the end of the Fin de Siecle.

For both composers, the singing voice sings no more. The memory of music helps the ex-prisoner hold on to his basic humanity. Once sensitized to the essential importance of music, the audience sees Schönberg’s work with far more sympathy and is far away from the idea of it as a decadent, elitist compositional exercise.