Soprano Claire Booth announces her 2024 activity with a major focus on Schoenberg in his 150th anniversary year

Highlights include:

• Claire Booth celebrates Schoenberg’s 150th anniversary with numerous performances of his works across the UK.

• Performances of Schoenberg’s seminal work Pierrot Lunaire at Aldeburgh Festival, Corbridge Music Festival, Oxford international Song Festival and The Glasshouse with Royal Northern Sinfonia.

• Further Schoenberg concerts at the Arnold Schoenberg Centre in Vienna, Wigmore Hall, Music@Malling, Fishguard Festival of Music and Music in the Round in Sheffield.

• Claire Booth releases two Schoenberg focused albums: Expressionist Music on Orchid Classics on 24 May and Portraits of Pierrot on Onyx Classics on 27 September.

• Claire Booth has commissioned two new works: Cabaret Songs a song cycle by Zoe Martlew and Folk an orchestral cycle with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra by Helen Grime. Booth gives their world premieres in July and September respectively.

• Opera 21’s Sonata for Broken Fingers receives its world premiere in July with Claire Booth leading the cast also including James Cleverton, Stephen Richardson, Lucy Schaufer and Christopher Lemmings under the baton of Sian Edwards.

Claire Booth has become internationally renowned both for her commitment to an almost unparalleled breadth of repertoire, and for the vitality and musicianship that she brings to the operatic stage and concert platform. 2024 sees her celebrate Schoenberg’s 150th anniversary with numerous performances of a wide range of his work and the release of two albums focused on his music. Other highlights include world premieres that Booth has commissioned from two of today’s most exciting composers Helen Grime and Zoe Martlew. She also joins Opera 21 for the world premiere performance and recording of Joe Cutler and Max Hoehn’s Sonata for Broken Fingers.

Schoenberg 150

2024 is Schoenberg’s 150th anniversary (13 September is his birthday) and as a stalwart advocate Claire Booth is performing his work widely at the Aldeburgh Festival, Wigmore Hall, Corbridge Festival, Oxford International Song Festival, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Arnold Schoenberg Centre and Music in the Round. Booth also has two Schoenberg albums being released in May (Expressionist Music on Orchid Classics) and September (Portraits of Pierrot on Onyx Classics).

Expressionist Music on Orchid Classics released 24 May

“Complex human nature requires complex music” Arnold Schoenberg.

Dark beauty, primal intensity and searing honesty - expressionism is one of the most potent of all artistic movements and a formative influence on the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was also an accomplished amateur artist. Recorded against the backdrop of the challenges of the global landscape, and taking their cue from his comment that “painting is the same to me as making music” Expressionist Music sees Claire Booth and Christopher Glynn range widely through the world of Schoenberg's songs to explore themes that correspond to eight of his own paintings: Expectation, flesh, nocturne, hatred, satire, thinking and tears - an immersive and comprehensive journey through both the complexities of human nature and the world of expressionism. Deconstructing preconceptions surrounding Schoenberg’s compositions, Expressionist Music is a new album featuring remarkable interpretations of Schoenberg’s songs, resonating with timeless beauty and resonance. The fourth in a series of critically acclaimed retrospectives of composers less remembered for their vocal output (Grainger Folk Music, Grieg Lyric Music, Mussorgsky Unorthodox Music), Expressionist Music unearths the shifting colours, raw emotions and profound sensuality of music that should be far better known. Full details available here.

Portraits of Pierrot on Onyx Classics released 27 September

From her debut performance under the baton of Pierre Boulez, Claire Booth is increasingly associated with Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and has recorded it for the first time with Ensemble 360, to be released on 27 September. The album explores how the inherently malleable Pierrot has been taken up by creatives throughout the centuries, who - assuming his mask as a type of alter ego - could be melancholic yet murderous, a trickster yet romantic, get riotously drunk or morbidly depressed, flouting all in the name of art. Through works by Schumann, Marx, Amy Beach, Kowalski, Irene Poldowski, Korngold and Thea Musgrave as well as Schoenberg, Portraits of Pierrot offers the listener the many vocal and instrumental representations of Pierrot’s character, who in the words of Jules Lemaitre “represents human vice with an air of insouciance and innocence which makes it extremely attractive…purely sensual and free from the yoke of conscience, which is perhaps the definition of perfect felicity.”

Schoenberg Performances

Pierrot Lunaire is Schoenberg’s ‘drunk on moonlight’ melodrama setting 21 poems by Albert Giraud. It is traditionally performed by soprano and small ensemble in his Sprechstimme style (combining speech and song). Booth gives numerous performances this year including the Aldeburgh Festival between Summer Solstice and the full moon (21 June, Britten Studio, 10pm); Corbridge Chamber Music Festival (27 July, St Andrew’s Church, 3.15pm); Oxford International Song Festival (18 October, Levine Building, Oxford, 9.45pm) and the Royal Northern Sinfonia (2 November, The Glasshouse, Gateshead).

The Arnold Schoenberg Centre was established in 1998 in Vienna and is a unique source of the composer’s archive and a cultural centre that is open to the public. Booth has a close relationship with the Centre and will perform a recital including music by Schoenberg, Ives (who also celebrates his 150th anniversary this year) and Poulenc, marrying all three composers’ fascination with art songs and cabaret. (3 December, Schoenberg Centre, Vienna).

Other Schoenberg performances from Booth include a selection of his lieder with pianist Christopher Glynn at Music@Malling (23 September, St Mary’s Church, West Malling, 7pm) and Schoenberg’s intimate Quartet No. 2 at Music in the Round with Ensemble 360 (7 December, Curcible Playhouse, Sheffield, 7pm).

New commissions and world premieres

Working with composers Helen Grime and Zoe Martlew, Claire Booth has commissioned 2 world premieres for 2024. Grime’s new 30-minute work, Folk, is a collaboration with author Zoe Gilbert, reworking her critically acclaimed novel Folk into a series of scenes for Soprano and Orchestra. It debuts in September with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Ryan Wigglesworth (26 September, City Halls Glasgow & 27 September, Music Hall, Aberdeen).

Taking her cue from Schoenberg’s Cabaret Songs, Martlew has written a new theatrical song cycle entitled Hotel Babylon for Booth and pianist Jâms Coleman. The work receives its world premiere at Petworth Festival (25 July, Champs Hill, Coldwaltham, 7.30pm) with further performances at Fishguard Festival of Music (29 July, Theatre Gwaun, 7.30pm) and the London Premiere at Wigmore Hall (29 November, 7.30pm).

Opera 21’s Sonata for Broken Fingers is a new opera produced in partnership with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Birmingham Record Company and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. In the last days of Stalin’s reign, a mysterious phone call from the Kremlin launches a desperate search for a missing pianist. Inspired by the life of the pianist Maria Yudina, this new chamber opera explores the role of music in people’s lives during one of the darkest periods of Soviet history. Composed by Joe Cutler with libretto by Max Hoehn, Claire Booth leads the cast which also includes James Cleverton, Stephen Richardson, Lucy Schaufer and Christopher Lemmings under the baton of Sian Edwards (14 July, CBSO Center, Birmingham, 4.30pm).

Other highlights

Claire Booth collaborates twice with conductor Jessica Cottis: first to perform Mozart’s Bella mia fiamma, addio and Fra cento affanni, K 88 at the Janáčeck Festival (30 May, Ostrava, Anton Dvořák Theatre, 7pm) and second with the Armenian National Symphony Orchestra performing Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn for the first time (7 June, Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall, 7pm).

Claire gives three concerts at Britten Pears Arts’ Aldeburgh Festival. Judith Weir’s mini opera for solo voice King Harald’s Saga and Thomas Larcher’s My Illness is the Medicine I need (10 June, Britten Studio, 3pm). As part of the Nash Ensemble’s 60th anniversary celebrations Booth joins them for two concerts: the first is conducted by Martyn Brabbins and the programme includes Mozart, Beethoven, songs by Julian Anderson and Judith Weir’s folkloric piano quartet (22 June, 11am, Britten Studio) and Pierrot Lunaire (21 June, Britten Studio, 10pm).

Booth reunites with the Nash Ensemble later in the year to give the world premiere of a New Song by Julian Anderson (5 October, Wigmore Hall, 7.30pm).

Booth gives three concerts at Corbridge Chamber Music Festival this July. Alongside Pierrot Lunaire, she will also perform Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok (26 July, St Andrew’s Church, 6pm) and Dvořák Love Sings arranged by Zoe Martlew (28 July, St Andrew’s Church, 3pm).

At Oxford International Song Festival Booth performs Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragmente in a collaboration with Tamsin Waley-Cohen which sets extracts from Kafka’s diaries and letters which the composer collected during his lifetime (12 October, New College Chapel, Oxford, 9.45pm) and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (18 October, Levine Building, Oxford, 9.45pm).

Coaching & Advocacy

In addition to a double first in Modern History from Oxford, Claire has recently gained a distinction in her MA in Cultural Policy and Management from Kings College London with prizes for best student and dissertation. Her research into whether the presentation of operas in English translation remains culturally appropriate is timely, and she has presented her findings to the Royal Ballet and Opera, Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne, Opera North and Scottish Opera. As an articulate and determined advocate, Claire hopes to add value and impact to changes needed in the sector. This, in addition to her coaching and mentoring given both at Britten Pears Arts, music colleges and post graduate programmes demonstrates her dedicated to coaching the next generation of singers and in particular focusing on gripping new modern opera and song repertoire. Booth gives masterclasses at Britten Pears Arts, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and Royal Academy of Music this autumn.