MUSIC REVIEWS : Inspired Programming

How better to preface that mother of all melodramas, Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” than with music that might help us get a handle on the perennially strange Expressionistic masterpiece?

For the opener of its ninth season, Saturday at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, the Southwest Chamber Music Society did some digging and came up with obscure works by Schumann, Liszt and Wagner demonstrating “Pierrot’s” parentage. It was inspired programming.

Schumann’s “Zwei Declamationen,” Liszt’s “Lenore,” and Wagner’s “Gretchens Lied” are melodramas themselves--or declaimed poetry with piano accompaniment. The spoken word is not musically notated, but simply dramatically recited, the piano providing scene, mood, sigh and exclamation point.

In the event these pieces didn’t quite ring the bell, that was of secondary importance. The musical element, for one thing, proved utterly subservient to the spoken line, a type of rudimentary silent-movie accompaniment. Additionally, though no texts or translations were provided (only brief synopses), all the poems were presented in German. This distanced the drama unnecessarily, as these pieces, unlike songs, are not word-for-word settings of the texts; it might have been at least interesting to try Schumann’s melodrama of Shelley’s “The Fugitives” in English as well.

Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Jeff von der Schmidt were the effective declaimers; Susan Svrcek the able accompanist, who also offered brief, rare piano works by the three composers.

After intermission, soprano Bryn-Julson gave a luminescent performance of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot,” putting numerous talents at the service of the work. Appropriate acting illuminated the texts (she gazed at the moon, smoked the pipe made from Cassander’s head). Singing from memory, she wailed, shouted, whispered and gasped through the sprechstimme . with graceful authority. She even dressed the part, her gold, puffed jacket evoking the harlequin’s garb. And Von der Schmidt conducted a polished and compelling instrumental accompaniment.