Of the revolutionary works created in the years before World War I, only Schoenberg's chamber-music song cycle continues to startle. Stravinsky's "Sacre" now sounds as listener-friendly as Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade," Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" as accessible as the Liszt Sonata in B Minor. But as Charles Wuorinen once remarked, listening to "Pierrot" is like trying to "befriend a porcupine."
The remark was quoted in Cyrus Ginwala's insightful program note, which accompanied the performance of "Pierrot" he led last night in Towson State University's Concert Hall. But as Ginwala himself wrote, Schoenberg's exotic blossom -- a setting of 21 expressionist poems by Albert Giraud for singer and five players -- is also "a lavish and extensive buffet."
That seems exactly right and also exactly characterizes the performance Ginwala conducted. Among the ways in which one can appreciate "Pierrot" -- "enjoy" is not the right word -- is as a feast of virtuosity. With some of Baltimore's best musicians -- Ruth Drucker (soprano), Nancy Stagnitta (flute and piccolo), Edward Palanker (clarinet and bass clarinet), Earl Carlyss (violin and viola), Cecylia Barczyk (cello) and Arno Drucker (piano) -- one was able to partake without getting indigestion.
All hands performed heroically, but Ruth Drucker was first among equals. If she did not make this most taxing of all vocal works sound easy, she was able to steer a confident course between the twin perils of "Pierrot's" demand for singing and speaking. She does not have a particularly large voice, but she used it intelligently and imaginatively to explore the work's moonlit and blood-drenched terrors and grotesquerie. She is sensitive in ways few singers are to a poetic text, and she captured the composer's tortured and fun-house-mirror distorted lyricism.
The interesting first half of the program included George Rochberg's early Duo for Oboe and Bassoon (expertly performed by oboist Ann Bilezikian and bassoonist Gene Griswold); the 15-year-old Richard Strauss' "Romanze," in a performance by clarinetist Alexander Sidorowicz and pianist Lawrence Crawford that captured the incipient lyricism in the future composer of "Rosenkavalier"; and performances of cabaret songs -- two by Benjamin Britten (on texts by W. H. Auden) and one by William Bolcom (on a text by Arnold Weinstein) -- by soprano Carolyn Black and pianist Drucker.
With confident and rhythmically assured playing from Drucker, Black captured the spirits of these theater pieces splendidly: adorable and flirtatious by turns in Britten's "Tell Me the Truth about Love" and "Calypso" and rakish in Bolcom's bizarre and wonderful "George."