Schoenberg’s melodrama Pierrot Lunaire caused a sensation at its première in Berlin in 1912. The piece, a setting of ‘three times seven poems’ by the Belgian Symbolist Albert Giraud, shocked conservatives and inspired a new generation of composers and performers to subvert convention.

Ensemble intercontemporain, founded in Paris by Pierre Boulez in 1976, remains true to Pierrot’s pioneering spirit. Members of the ensemble are joined by soprano Salomé Haller, an expert in early and contemporary music, who takes on the role of narrator in Schoenberg’s expressionist work in a programme that also includes the world première of a new score by Bruno Mantovani, director of the Paris Conservatoire.