This programme features two of Arnold Schoenberg’s masterworks: ‘Transfigured Night’ and ‘Pierrot Lunaire’, both referring to a literary source and attaching magic and troubling power to the moon.
The poem ‘Transfigured Night’ by Richard Dehmel is a poetic rendering of a dialogue, in which a woman tells her lover she is expecting a baby with another man. During the fin-de‐siècle period in Vienna, themes such as these, alluding to Freud’s eros‐thanatos theory, were particularly fashionable. Het Collectief will be playing Schoenberg’s ‘symphonic poem’, originally written for string sextet, in a colourful version for piano trio by his pupil Eduard Steuermann.
Pierrot Lunaire is based on the symbolist poetry of the Belgian poet Albert Giraud, with a moonstruck Pierrot in the leading role. The very competent German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben inspired Schoenberg to write this hallucinating masterpiece, The enormous response that his composition received and continues to receive is not only due to the introduction of the famous ‘Sprechgesang’ - a subtle transitory form between speech and song - but equally to the sensuous fusion of text and music.
Het Collectief
Sprechstimme : Jacqueline Janssen (2004-2012), Marianne Pousseur (2012-2018) & Lore Binon (2025-)
Conductor : Robin Engelen (2004-2011), Reinbert de Leeuw (2011-2018) and without conductor (2025-)
Calendar
2018.05.18 Festival SONIK Quimper (F)
2017.12.16 Musis Arnhem (NL)
2017.09. 21 Muziekgebouw ‘t IJ Amsterdam (NL)
2016.10.21 Handelsbeurs Ghent (B)
2016.10.05 International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival Nicosia (CY)
2016.10.03 Novecento Festival Leuven B)
2016.01.14 deSingel Antwerp (B)
2016.01.13 Espace Garage Ottignies (B)
2013.10.31 Concertgebouw Bruges (B)
2013.01.10 CC Hasselt (B)
2012.10.27 Flagey Brussels (B)
2012.08.01 Festival de l’Eté Mosan Bioul (B)
2011.02.10 Stadspodia Leiden (NL)
2011.07.21 Festival de Saintes (F)
2011.07.14 Festival de Inverno Campos do Jordao (BRA)
2011.07.12 MASP Sao Paulo (BRA)
2011.01.15 CC Sint-Niklaas (B)
2011.01.14 De Nieuwe Veste Breda (NL)
2010.12.08 deSingel Antwerp (B)
2010.03.05 CC Strombeek (B)
2007.09.29 Festival van Vlaanderen Mechelen (B)
2005.02.18 deSingel Antwerp (B)
2004.10.27 Muziekconservatorium Brussels (B)
