MUSIC REVIEW : ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ Shines in Irvine

A performance of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” remains, now almost 80 years after its composition, an event.

The reasons are many, but certainly one is that the work retains its challenges for performer and listener alike: it’s difficult, elusive, uncompromising music.

Perhaps this partly explains the smallish gathering in attendance Sunday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre for a UCI Chamber Music program: Audiences, nowadays at least, are famous for avoiding challenges.

It also might explain the all-out vitality of the performance by soprano Lucy Shelton and an ensemble made up of UCI faculty and guests, including pianist Gilbert Kalish. The players weren’t just performing the piece, they were meeting its demands.

Shelton, placed considerably above the other performers on a platform to one side, offered vividly theatrical readings of the Giraud poems, underlining their malice and rage, dreaminess and sinister humor. She stressed song over speech in the Sprechgesang, giving the music connective, melodic shape. Her pointed enunciation and strict rhythmicality throughout kept her expressiveness in sharp focus.

The ensemble, conducted by Zelman Bokser, contributed exuberant, grandly projected backdrop. Kalish played with particularly impressive precision and weightiness, and flutist Lawrence Kaplan was a standout in his sensitive, finely honed solos.

The first half of the program consisted of music by Debussy and Ravel mostly contemporary with “Pierrot.” In Debussy’s “Trois poemes de Stephane Mallarme” and his “Melodies,” Shelton sang with restrained emotion and gently curved phrasing, while Kalish provided clearly articulated, warm-hued accompaniment.

Ravel’s own “Trois poemes de Stephane Mallarme” unfolded languorously, with Shelton in creamy voice and the ensemble colorfully lucid. Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro opened the concert in a tidy, though occasionally poorly balanced reading, with harpist JoAnn Turovsky cleanly and firmly delineating the solo part.