CLOWNING AROUND

ALEXANDRA MURAVYEVA

‘Iam so incredibly happy and thankful for this piece because it enriched my universe called music. Getting away from the instrument and all the barriers you have as an instrumentalist, and stepping into this vast territory of really being yourself: it was an amazing trip. It was like going to the moon.’

At that, Patricia Kopatchinskaja laughs in such a way that I am not absolutely sure whether the joke - we are discussing her new recording for Alpha Classics of Schoenberg’s cycle of 21 poems, Pierrot lunaire - is intentional. What is unusual about this project is that she performs the title role, intoning the uncanny vocals of mischievous Pierrot, who gets drunk on moonlight as if it were moonshine and regales us wiTha sequence of lurid nocturnal visions. Her violin playing, meanwhile, is confined to one or two very short interludes.

Kopatchinskaja began performing the part during an episode of tendonitis in 2015 that required her to stop playing for a while. She already knew the piece well as a violinist, to the extent that she was able to anticipate the text in her head as she played. ‘I knew that, when I had time, I would like to take on the speaking part. But it seemed to be somehow so bold. When I got tendonitis in my arm, I thought, “This is the time I’m really allowed to do the most crazy thing I can imagine.” That was to learn Pierrot.’

Schoenberg gives very specific instructions on how to execute the Sprechstimme, which is neither sung (except on rare occasions) nor spoken. Nor, he warns, should it ‘lapse into a singsong speech pattern’. But it should be rhythmically exact, so requires a certain level of technical precision. ‘I started by taking lessons from a very experienced, wonderful teacher called Esther de Bros in Bern,’ says Kopatchinskaja. ‘She has coached many singers in pronunciation, which I found was more important - not so much the voice.’

'IT WAS A SHOCK WHEN I SAW MYSELF IN THE MIRROR. I THOUGHT, "WHAT AM I DOING? NOW I AM COMPLETELY MAD"' - PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA

Since then she has performed the role live many times (one version wiThmusicians from the Berlin Philharmonic is available at the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall). Her second performance, which she followed up by playing Ravel’s Tzigane, was in the unlikely surroundings of an alcohol-free bar in Salt Lake City, Utah. For that she dressed up in costume and remembers trying to decide what makeup to choose, as does her alter ego in ‘Der Dandy’, the third poem in the cycle.

‘I must say, it was a shock when I saw myself in the mirror. I thought, “What am I doing? Now I am completely mad.”’ Although that gave her a strong experience of inhabiting a different persona, she insists that performing in a guise other than that of violinist is no more than an extension of herself. ‘It’s not another book, let’s say: it’s the same vocabulary. It just gives even more freedom. I must say performing as Pierrot also helped me to develop, not only as a musician but as a violinist.

I am moving further and further from this so-called classical tradition which is a big misunderstanding, a huge and damaging misunderstanding. I got even closer to a lively, spontaneous and colourful understanding of the expression of music: going as close as possible to the sense; forgetting about paper and notes, or the scholarly extracts on how to play violin. Pierrot lunaire is such a dreamy landscape where everything is possible, wiThthis lunatic personality: this pale white character, never knowing where he is.’

Kopatchinskaja performs as Pierrot in Theater Rigiblick, Zurich, in April 2018

As we talk, Kopatchinskaja recalls the origins of Pierrot in commedia dell’arte - some of the earliest professional theatre troupes wiThtheir carnivalesque, improvisatory stories - and she is drawn to the inventiveness of the art form and its practitioners. She talks of the musicians on her recording as if they, too, were members of a close-knit band. ‘They are hand-picked, and every single one is for me the incarnation of the voice they play. These are the best musicians I can imagine for this piece, and we elaborated everything together. They know exactly my rubatos, my agogics; I know exactly the language of their playing, and the recording was like one sweep, one brush. It was incredible. It was the easiest recording I ever did in my life.’

She picks the Swiss clarinettist Reto Bieri as an example. ‘He’s my absolute favourite musician-philosopher in the world. He has his own universe of thinking. When he plays clarinet he has millions of possibilities, millions of colours, millions of stories to tell wiThhis instrument. Having these kinds of partners on stage, you don’t worry about the result: it will always be something different and always very much founded in sexuality, in sense, in content, in personalities. It’s a really exciting conversation wiThthem - no bureaucracy.’

What did that mean for the role of producer on the project? ‘This is the great advantage of Alpha,’ she says. ‘Didier Martin never intervenes because he trusts musicians. He gives the full responsibility to musicians - we are really free to do what we believe in. We’ve known each other for so many years, Didier and I, and are a fantastic team. I told him about the project and the choice of pieces.

I explained the programming to him and he said, “Go for it.”’

The album, recorded in December 2019 at the Radio Studio Zurich, does otherwise focus on Kopatchinskaja’s violin playing, notably in the four pieces by Anton Webern and Schoenberg’s Phantasy, boThwiThpiano. ‘I always imagine Webern is a starcatcher: he catches the light of the stars, splinters of time, looking backwards and forwards at the same time, making a balancing act. For me he shows the way to the future, much more than Schoenberg. Schoenberg is the rule breaker, but Webern is already smelling and breathing the new time. The Schoenberg Phantasy is much more rooted in the old time and old tradition: you find a waltz, you find a march. He speaks in a new language but the form is still understandable. You could still try to dance to it.’

Further underlining the spirit of that age, the album includes the orchestration of Strauss’s Kaiser-Walzer that Schoenberg made to lure audiences to early performances of Pierrot lunaire. ‘Then we added the Wiener Marsch of Fritz Kreisler as a joke,’ she explains. ‘In commedia dell’arte they always included these jokes between the pieces - when they noticed their audience getting bored, they tried to wake them up. They spontaneously made jokes: Pierrot would start to kill flies which were not actually there, things like that. And there were obscene things, too. So this is a CD filled wiThthe sounds of that time.’

WORKS Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire op.21.

Phantasy for violin and piano op.47. Six Little Piano Pieces op.19 Webern Four Pieces for violin and piano op.7 Johann Strauss II Kaiser-Waltzer op.437 (arr Schoenberg) Kreisler Wiener Marsch ARTISTS Patricia Kopatchinskaja (vn/voice)

Meesun Hong (vn) Marko Milenkovic (va)

Thomas Kaufmann (vc) Julia Gallego (fl)

Reto Bieri (cl) Joonas Ahonen (pf)

RECORDING VENUE Radio Studio Zurich, Switzerland RECORDING DATE December 2019 CATALOGUE NO Alpha Classics Alpha722 RELEASE DATE 9 April 2021