Xtet Makes Lyrical ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ Sound Radically New Again

Only a week after a well-attended Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group performance of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” Xtet put on another performance of the piece at LACMA’s Bing Theatre on Monday, drawing a bigger-than-average Monday Evening Concerts turnout. Is this notoriously fearsome song cycle catching on? If so, it took only 89 years.

For Xtet, which celebrated its 15th year together with this concert, “Pierrot” is almost a stroll in the park, for it has done it numerous times, gradually reducing the amount of rehearsals per performance from 20 to a mere six. One can hear an assured, lyrical sense of ease in the conductor-less ensemble’s playing, with particularly eloquent cello solos from Roger Lebow.

Soprano Daisietta Kim returned to Xtet after a seven-year absence with a lively, choreographed approach to the sprechstimme part (in Andrew Porter’s English translation). Dressed as a clown, she darted fluidly around the stage, striking poses, creating a commedia dell’arte atmosphere that seemed at ironic odds with some of the more morbidly chilling stanzas. She steered a middle ground between speech and song, sometimes accurately observing Schoenberg’s pitches and note values, sometimes veering away.

Earlier, Donald Crockett conducted his attractive new septet “Tracking Inland” (2001), which opens with that elusive commodity, a great musical idea--a lovely ostinato pattern that comes around again after a journey through agitated and lyrical terrain. Chen Yi’s “Qi” (1997) for flute, cello, piano and percussion also used ostinatos as an engine but with an undercurrent of tension and a touch of pentatonic flavor. It is no knock on either of these pieces to suggest that ancient “Pierrot” still sounded like the most radical work of the night.