By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Mischa Santora and members of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra had something to prove Wednesday night: There is an enthusiastic audience for contemporary music.

And prove it they did. Santora, now in his fourth season as music director, launched a "Twentieth Century Classics Series" with an all-Schoenberg program in the Fifth Third Bank Theater at the Aronoff Center.

The black box theater was the ideal atmosphere for such an experiment. Even Schoenberg's atonal Pierrot Lunaire (1912), with a hallucinatory text sung in a dramatic speech-song, had listeners on the edges of their seats, drinking in every note.

Santora prepared the audience with an enlightening discussion before each piece. (I only wished the program's translations had included the original German.)

A youngish audience of about 100 sat on three sides of the six-piece ensemble, whose members wore black turtlenecks. Although the hall's heavy draperies made it acoustically dry, the setting had a casual, cabaret-like intimacy.

Arnold Schoenberg, the Second Viennese School father of 12-tone (a complex system based on 12 notes) still incites violent opinion among traditional concert-goers. But his Transfigured Night, a last gasp of romanticism which opened the program, hardly seems modern to our ears any more.

Seated on a stool, Santora led the original string sextet version, rather than the familiar string orchestra arrangement. The work is based on Richard Dehmel's deeply moving poem about two lovers, in which the woman confesses she is carrying another's child.

The performance was intense and fresh. In the dry acoustical environment, the sound was exceedingly clear and at times, almost clinical - exposing minor intonation and ensemble problems. But the instrumental dialogue was wonderful, as the music flowed from tenderness to angst with sudden tremolos and soaring chromaticism. One of the highlight's was Christina Coletta's beautifully felt cello solo.

Pierrot Lunaire, a song cycle based on Albert Giraud's 21 expressionist poems of a grotesque little clown, is of a different world. Soprano Kathryn Hart, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, stood among the six musicians (winds, strings and piano), and navigated her demanding Sprechstimme role fearlessly and with gripping nuance. Her vocal effects ranged from lyrical to ugly, and her facial expressions wonderfully mimicked the mock-tragic figure of Pierrot.

There was the angst-filled "Gallows song" and the panicked "Beheading." She coolly enunciated eerie thoughts of giant black butterflies and ghostly moons, shrieking when the imagery climaxed in visions of blood.

Colorful instrumental effects glinted sharply, in varying combinations and timbres. Pianist Josh Nemith negotiated the fiendish score superbly, and never overpowered, even in the thick, black chords of "Night."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com