Hebrides Ensemble present Pierrot Lunaire

Moon-drunk, lovestruck and alone one night, Pierrot spirals into a violent, dangerous fantasy world, and attempts to come home to a place long forgotten.

This fascinating work by Arnold Schoenberg, setting Albert Giraud’s dark, eerie poem cycle to music, and created for a female performer and chamber ensemble, was first performed in Berlin in 1912, and is very rarely revived in the UK. It’s a challenging, exciting piece, and has in the past been performed by vocalists as diverse as Cleo Laine and Bjork: for this tour Hebrides Ensemble have teamed up with the Vienna Burgtheater’s lead actor, the excellent Sylvie Rohrer.

This production is accompanied by a programme of works by contemporary, experimental and classical composers also inspired, as Pierrot Lunaire is, by the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte, and a new commission by young Scottish composer Helen Grime.

As ever, the Ensemble is entirely composed of world-renowned soloists. The opportunity to hear artists of this calibre up close, in a relatively intimate setting, is one of the things that makes a Hebrides Ensemble tour unique.