Camerata Pacifica began its February program at the Huntington Library with Lara Morciano’s Embedding Tangles, with flutist Sébastian Jacot, who premiered the piece in 2014. I don’t often get to hear works for solo flute, so this sounded promising. Alas, my initial excitement was instantly killed when we got attacked by a torrent of notes that were so fast, that we heard more air than notes. Actually, my disappointment began when I saw that the night was going to be amplified and when Jacot walked on stage wearing a face microphone, it soon became clear that Morciano was more interested in flute noises than music. While very fast and very technical, it amounted to little more than blowing, mechanical clacking, and mouth noises. Over at the sound booth, Morciano overlaid and looped Jacot’s playing, occasionally throwing in some rumbles and static. All this was routed through a quadraphonic setup that looked more impressive than it sounded. It might as well have been mono in surround. Jacot put his whole body into this piece, but it was just a lot of warm air.
Sébastian Jacot, flute; Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
Pianist Irina Zahharenkova was next with George Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2, from 1926. Unhurried and mellow, it felt like a low-energy, cloudy day, where you can barely summon the strength to get out of bed. Of course, being Gershwin, this tiny, almost throwaway piece would count as a triumph for the rest of us.
The main draw of the night for me was a selection of songs by Kurt Weill. German Soprano Sarah Maria Sun, with Zahharenkova on piano, sang “Lied des Lotteriagenten” from Der Silbersee (1933), “Die stille Stadt” (1919), “Der Abschiedsbrief” (1933), and “It Never Was You” from Knickerbocker Holiday (1938). I expected the German songs to be sung in German; I didn’t expect that Sun expected the audience to know German. She delivered her spoken intro in German while vertically-mounted TVs placed far offstage displayed translations in TLDR walls of text (Too Long; Didn’t Read). I could either turn away from the stage and concentrate on the TVs and hear my reading voice, or I could watch the performance and miss the words. I chose the latter, in spite of my limited understanding of German.
Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
That could have been ok, except the selections were more of the type of Weill’s story songs, where melody takes a back seat to the words. Sun acted and talked the songs more than she sang them. Her acting certainly looked absorbing, but I couldn’t follow what she was saying, and neither did the audience. At one point, she was repeating a chorus, but instead of finishing it, she signaled for the audience to finish the lyric, as if everybody knows these songs and knows them in German. Maybe three people, way in the back, belatedly finished the line, to which Sun responded, “blah blah blah auf Deutsch!” Well, maybe if you sang in English, you could connect with the audience! She had no issue singing “It Never Was You” in English, going so far as to sing exaggerated rounded American R’s. She sang this one in a near-whisper into the microphone, which was fine.
Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
Zahharenkova next played Claude Debussy’s Claire de lune from Suite bergamasque (1905). Normally, I’m all over this song. Her playing was faultless. She took her time and it was everything I expected. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to program this mellow piece after 20 minutes of mellow music. Maybe it was my stubborn lingering cold symptoms. Tonight, Clair de lune didn’t move me at all. This went straight into Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke No. 6. Very slow and very short. It was a nice lead-in to the final selection.
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds “Pierrot lunaire” (“Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s ‘Pierrot lunaire'”), commonly known simply as Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (“Moonstruck Pierrot” or “Pierrot in the Moonlight”)
Sébastian Jacot, flute; Jolente de Maeyer, violin; Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet;
Ani Aznavoorian, cello; Irina Zahharenkova, piano (obstructed); Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
Concluding the program was Schoenberg’s Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds “Pierrot lunaire” (1912) (Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s “Pierrot lunaire”). Now with wet hair, nightgown, and face mic, Sun returned as the vocalist. Zahharenkova, Jacot, Jose Franch-Ballester (clarinet), Jolente De Maeyer (violin, viola), and Ani Aznavoorian (cello) comprised the ensemble. Before I go any further, I state up front that the players and their performance were first-rate. Unlike some other new works I see, I never heard a sour note or hesitation. The uncredited direction and lighting design were simple and moody. It could have been great, had it not all been in the service of Pierrot lunaire in German.
Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
The work began life as a set of 50 poems by Belgian writer Albert Giraud. Otto Erich Hartleben translated them into German, and Schoenberg set 21 of these to atonal music. The vocal part is spoke-sung and similarly difficult to follow. The result is highly expressionistic insanity set to music. It’s all very intellectually interesting, but, frankly, it’s an unforgiving 37-minute assault of random notes. Schoenberg gets away with this lack of musicality, for lack of a better word, since it makes us listen to the words. However, it was performed in German, so, on top of the random notes was random vocalizations. “So? Just read the words,” you say. Instead of displaying the translation line by line, subtitle-style, Camerata Pacifica displayed the full text of the poems at once, making it impossible to follow the poetry and music as Schoenberg intended. It was a complete disconnect between music, words, and their meanings. And remember, the screens are far off to the side. I could either view the performance or focus on reading. There is no point in displaying a translation if I can’t connect it to the words being sung. It just becomes gibberish. In the end, I ended up treating the screens as if they were a progress bar; when I recognized “fenster,” I glanced over to search for “window” so I could see how much time was left.
Sébastian Jacot, flute; Jolente de Maeyer, violin; Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet;
Ani Aznavoorian, cello; Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
The well-behaved and respectful audience, though they probably wouldn’t have admitted it, was also disconnected. When Pierrot lunaire ended, no one clapped, just silence. Not stunned silence, like you’d experience at a screening of The Innocents (1961), but a silence that said, “Okay, what’s next?” This, in spite of the finality of the slow fade to darkness, and that the poems on screen were numbered, and we’d been told it was 21 poems. It took some staff member (who else?) near the sound booth in back to cue the applause. Clearly, there were no fans of the work in the audience; they definitely wouldn’t have hesitated to applaud. This is my second time seeing a performance of Pierrot lunaire, and my reaction is the same as it was for Long Beach Opera’s pretentious production: interesting on paper, but I will not approach the work again, unless it’s in English.
photos by Kristian Caulder
Camerata Pacifica
played February 7-13, 2025, at four SoCal locations
reviewed on February 11, 2025, at The Huntington in San Marino
