Pierrot Lunaire: Sex & Madness | Adelaide Festival 2021 review

Terrifying images, dredged from the depths of the subconscious, portray a tortured mind in a world gone mad.

Jessica Aszodi in Pierrot Lunaire: Sex & Madness.

Pierrot Lunaire: Sex & Madness

Classical Music / AUS

FESTIVAL

Adelaide Town Hall

March 4

Do you suffer from lepidopterophobia? Best avoid Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire then.

One of the most memorable images in the piece concerns enormous black moths overrunning everything. This and other terrifying images, dredged from the depths of the subconscious, portray a tortured mind in a world gone mad.

Back in 1912 the world was about to embark on several decades of the most horrific violence in its history, and Schoenberg saw it coming.

The Adelaide Festival has a history with this piece – my first-ever Pierrot was at the 1972 Festival, with Peter Maxwell Davies, the Fires of London and Mary Thomas dressed as Pierrot in a circular pool of light like the moon.

Nothing will ever top that in my experience; it hit me like a sledge hammer. This performance was less theatrical, a concert rather than a cabaret, and less atmospheric, but there was still much to admire in it.

Jessica Aszodi was splendid as the sprechstimme Pierrot, growling, shrieking, hysterical, despairing – capturing the work’s macabre horror but also showing a keen sense its black humour.

The ensemble was excellent too, with Jack Symonds performing the near impossible act of playing the piano and directing.

Pierrot is unique – trying to put together an intelligible program around it is difficult, as this program proved.

The first half was dedicated to Australian music, but this sunburnt country is a different place entirely to the claustrophobic Vienna of Schoenberg, Freud and Schiele, and doesn’t often produce music that might complement Pierrot.

Richard Meale’s Lumen is a restrained piece lying somewhere between Scriabin and Debussy. Bright birds and Sorrows by Ross Edwards has a more melancholic tone than most of his music, though his characteristic upbeat joyfulness is there as well.

The Piano Quintet by Elena Kats-Chernin is a voluble work resembling a postmodern Mendelssohn: cascades of notes, especially in the piano part, managed deftly by Jacob Abela.

All three works were played extremely well, but it was a world away from Pierrot – maybe we should be grateful for that.