I am pleased to announce that I have been selected to write a new work for Dr K Sextet and soprano Lesley Jane Rogers as part of their Pierrot Project.
Dr K Sextet invited composers to set poems used in Schoenberg’s 8 Brettl-Lieder for a Pierrot-plus line-up: soprano, flutes, clarinets, percussion, piano, violin and cello. The new songs will be premièred as part of a Kabarett-themed performance at Club Inégales on 22nd January 2015, alongside the first part of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, in the first of the ‘Pierrot Pop-Ups’ concert series.
Schoenberg wrote the 8 Brettl-Lieder in 1901 whilst working as musical director at the Überbrettl: the German cabaret movement of artists and writers that emulated the French ‘Chat noir’, but were characterised more by political satire and gallows humour. This literary identity certainly doesn’t keep the Brettl-Lieder from being witty, playful and full of raucous double-entendre.
I will be setting one of the more risqué poems of the collection: Der genügsame Liebhaber, “The Easily Satisfied Lover” by Hugo Salus. I am looking forward to seeing what can be done with the full ensemble for it…
More information on the piece will follow soon!