Performer: Musicians from the Oslo Philharmonic

Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 melodrama Pierrot lunaire is a work of many paradoxes. The main character, Pierrot, is a man usually sung by a woman; the instrumentalists serve both as soloists and as an accompanying orchestra; it is performed using a style of singing more akin to stylised speech than actual singing; and it straddles the divide between high art and cabaret.