Chamber Music Collective to perform ‘Pierrot Lunaire’

Classical music boasts many works that most people know about, but few have heard.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata and Hector Berlioz’ “Requiem” are on that list. So is Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire.”

Every music history textbook and most music appreciation classes devote time and space to “Pierrot Lunaire.” But so far as area musicians and listeners remember, Spokane audiences have never heard a live performance of the work.

Sunday afternoon, the Inland Northwest Chamber Music Collective will perform “Pierrot Lunaire” at the Music Building Recital Hall on Eastern Washington University’s Cheney campus. The concert will also include Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio.

Schoenberg wrote “Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot)” in 1912 at the request of the actress and singer Albertine Zehme. It uses the text of 21 poems by the Belgian symbolist Albert Giraud in German translations by Otto Erich Hartleben.

The words are performed by a narrator or recitant in a style devised by the composer that he called Sprechstimme, which lies somewhere between ordinary speech and singing. The reading is accompanied by an ensemble of five players using seven instruments.

The recitant for Sunday’s “Pierrot” performance will be Susan Windham, a soprano familiar from her performances with the Spokane Symphony, Spokane Opera, the Northwest Bach Festival and other ensembles and series.

Instrumentalists include Bruce Bodden on flute and piccolo, Julia Salerno on violin and viola, and Jane Ellsworth on clarinet and bass clarinet, along with cellist John Marshall and pianist Kendall Feeney. William Conable will conduct.

Conable, on cello, and Feeney will be joined by Tracy Dunlop for Ravel’s Trio.

The Inland Northwest Chamber Music Collective, finishing its first season, is made up of musicians from the Spokane Symphony and area universities. It was founded by Conable, who taught at Ohio State University from 1972 until his retirement in 2008.