Goerne/Ólafsson - Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, 9 December 2022

Royal Festival Hall

Schubert: Der Wanderer, D 489; Wehmut, D 772; Der Jüngling und der Tod, D 545; Fahrt zum Hades, D 526; Schatzgräbers Begehr, D 761; Grenzen der Menschheit, D 716
Schumann: Meine Rose, op.90 no.2; Kommen und Scheiden, op.90 no.3; Die Sennin, op.90 no.4; Einsamkeit, op.90 no.5; Der schwere Abend, op.90 no.6
Schubert: Des Fischers Liebesglück, D 933; Der Winterabend, D 938; Drei Gesänge des Harfners, D 478
Brahms: Vier ernste Gesänge, op.121

Matthias Goerne (baritone)
Vikingur Ólafsson (piano)

Image: Arnaud Mbaki

A marvellous song recital from two great musicians made clear that there is much more to musical life—and life in general—in December than Advent, narrowly considered, although perhaps ultimately there was a light here to be discerned, shining in the greater darkness of mood and content. Whilst it would have been quite a treat to hear either Matthias Goerne or Vikingur Ólafsson, to hear both, in so productive a partnership, was special indeed. I hope it will not be the first of several such occasions. 

There was little light, at least in the sense of hope, in the opening set of six Schubert songs, though there was plenty of chiaroscuro, etched, painted, chiselled—for Ólafsson’s piano playing, one might say all three, at least—to their performance. The opening of Der Wanderer had one in no doubt that this was no conventional ‘accompanist’; the song began, as if the opening of a sonata: with just such purpose, shaded exquisitely and meaningfully, though far from in abstract. This was, in short, tone poetry—and how it elevated still further Schubert’s art. Goerne, in turn, sang of descending from the mountains, the valley dimming, the sea roaring, and that is just what he seemed to do, a descent as dramatic as if it had been staged, accomplished by voice alone. He spoke, or sang, it seemed with the wisdom of ages: a primaeval scene, from which, in the third stanza, an unmistakeable Viennese lilt could yet emerge. 

That attention to text, not only from Goerne but from Ólafsson too, marked every aspect of this recital: not in a pedantic way, but illuminating, alert to what words can accomplish, what music can, and what both can together (as well as to what both musicians can do together). Der Jüngling und der Tod opens with the sinking of the sun, heard and, crucially, felt from voice and piano alike, the latter’s chords almost Lisztian (as also in the preceding Wehmut), yet propelled by Schubert’s easy, almost profligate way with melody. The sweet beauty of death, or Death, could chillingly be felt at its close. Piano line in Fahrt zum Hades was just as crucial to the song’s course as the vocal line, almost as if this were a vocal sonata. And the piano’s response to Mayrhofer’s dread words ‘dein alter Fluss’ said as much as Goerne’s, finely judged rubato and all. Piano figuration and tone again worked together with voice in Schatzgräbers Begehr, the Lisztian chordal future (‘Il penseroso’, perhaps) returning in Grenzen der Menschheit: a special partnership with Goerne’s declamatory reading of Goethe. 

We turned then to Schumann, to five Lenau songs (nos 2-6) from the Sechs Gedichte und Requiem, op.90. ‘Meine Rose’ set the new scene perfectly from the piano: externally fragile, albeit with inner strength and vitality. Vocal delicacy and security contributed likewise in equal measure. Rankings are inane, yet it was difficult not to be reminded, however fleetingly, why sometimes one feels impelled to elevate Schumann even over Schubert as a song-composer. At any rate, here was a different, later, arguably more complete Romanticism. The magic of the postlude is common to both, of course, though there is something particular to Schumann’s artistry here, as we heard in the closing bars of ‘Kommen und Scheiden’. The expectancy of ‘Die Sennin’, the portrait of loneliness as total condition in ‘Einsamkeit’, and the heaviness, physical and metaphysical, in the air of ‘Der schwere Abend’ were all caught to near-perfection. 

Returning to Schubert, Des Fischers Liebesglück bore renewed witness to the partnership, visible and audible, onstage. These were two performances infinitely responsive to one another, with all the resulting subtleties that engenders, but also the unmistakeable directness of purpose. A robbed moment in time, a dynamic inflection spoke volumes—because it was acted on, part of a whole for both musicians and indeed for the audience too. Piano melodies, in whichever voice, in Der Winterabend had the magic of a Schubert impromptu: infinitely touching, and pregnant of so much poetic promise. The three Harper’s Songs from Wilhelm Meister proved in turn ardent, sorrowful and angry, and something close to chamber music with words, line in both parts supremely well judged. 

And line, if anything, proved still more the guiding thread to Brahms’s Four Serious Songs, here sounding as if Schubert and Bach had joined together to prepare a path new, yet old: which, in a way, is very much what they had. (Not to forget Schumann either.) The compelling flow of the first song, ‘Dann es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh’ seemed to recall the world of Ein deutsches Requiem, albeit here the more finely distilled. Its form was grasped and communicated perfectly, third stanza prepared by its two predecessors and incorporating their insights and experience into a true return. ‘Ich wandte mich’ was delivered as if by the Preacher himself, Goerne in his element. The bell-like quality to Ólafsson’s final chord said just as much. ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du’ was as dark as the verses themselves; yet, in typical Brahmsian fashion, captured to a tee by Goerne and Ólafsson alike, it revealed a myriad of colours as soon as one truly listened. ‘Rousing’ is perhaps not quite the right word for ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete’, but it was perhaps not so far off. It made for a fine conclusion in so many ways, seeming to have the full measure of this extraordinary song both in itself and as the last of four. This was distinguished music-making indeed.

Goerne/Schmalcz - Brahms, 26 April 2018

Wigmore Hall

Neun Lieder und Gesänge, op.32; Sommerabend, op.85 no.1; Mondenschein, op.85 no.2; Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, op.96 no.1; Es schauen die Blumen, op.96 no.3; Meerfahrt, op.96 no.4; Vier ernste Gesänge, op.96 no.4

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Alexander Schmalcz (piano)

At his best, Matthias Goerne does serious (ernst) at least as well as anyone else. He may not be everyone’s first choice as Papageno, although what he brings to the role is compelling indeed, quite different from the blithe clowning of some, arguably much closer to its fundamental sadness. (Is that not, after all, what clowns are about?)  Yet, individual taste aside, whom would one choose before him to sing Brahms, let alone the Four Serious Songs?

That set came last in this Wigmore Hall recital from Goerne and Alexander Schmalcz. Whilst it is difficult to imagine anyone having been seriously disappointed by the performance heard, I do not think it came close to matching a performance I heard last year in Salzburg from Goerne with Daniil Trifonov. Before hastening to judgement, however, I should caution that the fault did not necessarily lie with the pianist. Here, as indeed throughout, Schmalcz gave estimable accounts of Brahms’s musical structures, duly suggestive of both how they complement and how they do not the ways of the verbal texts. ‘Denn est gehet dem Menschen’ was perhaps the strongest performance here, offering a true sense of having reached the beginning of the end, finality clear even in the fury of its central stanza; ‘Es fährt alles an einen Ort…’. Echoes from Ein deutsches Requiem, always apparent, were perhaps more than usually so here. However, during the second and fourth songs in particular, a hectoring quality to Goethe’s performance, sometimes apparent earlier too, seemed to go a little too far in the role of the verbal Preacher (be it that of Ecclesiastes or St Paul). In the latter and final song, ‘Wenn ich met Menschen,’ there was a sense of the music never quite having settled; it seemed unduly complicated, as if minds of singer and pianist had not truly come together.

The Neun Lieder und Gesänge, op.32, fared much better. Why we do not hear these songs more often I really do not know. Perhaps it is simply that Brahms is still thought of more as an instrumental than a vocal composer. Surely the autobiographical element – Graham Johnson once suggested considering the set as a Komponistenliebe sequel to Schumann’s Dichterliebe – should attract. Above all, though, the sheer musical – and musico-dramatic – quality should. Wagner’s was not the only way. Schubert often hovered in the background, more oppressively than benignly, the opening ‘Wie raft ich mich auf in der Nacht’ suggestive almost of a retelling of the night of ‘Der Doppelgänger’, from a different, related person’s standpoint, several years later. Indeed that fabled ‘lateness’ of Brahms, however much it may stand in need of deconstruction, seemed, not inappropriately, present throughout this dark night’s proceedings. That is not to say that darkness was unvaried; it nevertheless predominated, still more so in the following ‘Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen’. ‘Ich schleich umher’ offered different forms of repression, repression remaining the operative word, however. Two August von Platen storms ensued, prior to a true sense of reckoning in another setting of that same poet, ‘Du sprichst, dass ich mich täuschte’, almost as if this were the cycle’s – if indeed a cycle it be – peripeteia. Hafiz, translated by Georg Friedrich Daumer followed, in three songs, the first two exquisitely bitter in their ‘Süsse’ (‘sweetness’, as the first has it) – or should that be the other way around? Blissful in its quiet ecstasy, ‘Wie bist du meine Königin’ seemed to hark back to Schubert’s ‘Du bist die Ruh’, without abdicating its ‘late’ knowledge that it would prove impossible to return.

Five Heine settings came in between. (There was no interval.) ‘Sommerabend’ benefited from especially fine piano voicing, as if shadowing the vocal line, a Doppelgänger to it, which in a way it is, yet not only in a ‘purely musical’ way. ‘Mondenschein’ proved in turn a moonlit Doppelgänger to its predecessor. The exquisite drowsiness of death and recollection, quite without hope of an after-life or any other ‘beyond’, came to us in the deathly ‘Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht’. An intermezzo-like reading – from both artists – of ‘Es schauen die Blumen’ was followed by a somewhat hectoring ‘Meerfahrt’. Perhaps that was the point – up to a point. Sometimes, however, as Heine might have advised, there are other forms of preparation than rage.

Das Rheingold, LPO/Jurowski, 27 January 2018

Royal Festival Hall

Images: Simon Jay Price

Woglinde – Sofia Fomina

Wellgunde – Rowan Hellier

Flosshilde – Lucie Špičkova

Freia – Lyubov Petrova

Fricka – Michelle DeYoung

Erda – Anna Larsson

Froh – Allan Clayton

Loge – Vsevolod Grivnov

Wotan – Matthias Goerne

Donner – Stephen Gadd

Fasolt – Matthew Rose

Fafner – Brindley Sherratt

Mime – Andrew Thompson

Alberich – Robert Hayward

Malcolm Rippeth (lighting)

Katie Thackeray (deputy stage manager)

Ted Huffman (consultant)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

It is, of course, quite an achievement in itself for a symphony orchestra to perform Das Rheingold or indeed any of the Ring dramas. It does not happen very often, not nearly so often as it should; for given Wagner’s crucial musico-historical position, this is music that should stand at the very centre of their repertoires – just as Beethoven should at the centre of opera orchestras’. One can envy the practice of many German orchestras, which play for both opera house and symphony hall, but envy does not necessarily take us very far. (Actually, as Alberich will show us, it does, but perhaps not in the best direction.) In a closer-to-ideal world, admitted Vladimir Jurowski in the programme, there would have been a theatrical production, but the Ring ‘would be the end of Glyndebourne as a venue – it would simply fall apart if we tried to squeeze the orchestra into the pit!’ Why an achievement to perform it, though? Because Wagner’s dramas offer a standing rebuke to neoliberalism. It is not that there is any lack of ‘demand’; look how performances, especially in Wagner-starved Britain, will often sell out within a few minutes. But however great the demand, they will not ‘pay for themselves’. They are a communal undertaking, explicitly intended and functioning as heirs, political, social, religious, and dramatic – the distinctions make no sense – to the Attic tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles. (For more on that, please click here.)

Moreover, for the London Philharmonic Orchestra to give such an outstanding orchestral performance, in what must be the first time many of its players will have performed the score, is again cause for thanks and rejoicing. The LPO strings could hardly have proved more protean, the variegation of their tone a challenge to many an opera orchestra, that variegation surely born in part of Jurowski’s strenuous demands. Detail was present and vivid to what sometimes seemed a well-nigh incredible decree. For instance, the brass spluttering as Alberich floundered in the Rhine, for instance, looked forward suggestively to Strauss’s critics in Ein Heldenleben. If the anvils did not sound as they might in one’s head, when do they ever? That was no fault of the excellent nine players on three sides of the stage. The Prelude sounded – and, given the pipes behind the stage – unusually organ-like: not just the timbres, but also the insistence on the E-flat pedal, quite beyond any I can recall previously having heard. Such was the revealing side of Jurowski’s tight leash and rhythmic (harmonic rhythm included) exactitude, Bruckner coming strongly to mind.

Fasolt (Matthew Rose), Freia (Lyubov Petrova), and Fafner (Brindley Sherratt)

And yet, as so often, Jurowski himself proved too unyielding, almost Toscanini-like, if on a lower voltage. His again was quite an achievement, given that this was the first time he had conducted the score. There is no reason to think that subsequent performances will not reap rewards. By the same token, however, it would be idle to think that this compared to a Daniel Barenboim or a Bernard Haitink, although it certainly knocked spots off the incoherent incompetence Wagner generally suffers under Haitink’s successor at Covent Garden. To Londoners who hear little or nothing else, this would rightly be a cause for rejoicing. Moreover, the sometimes almost caricatured formalism of Jurowski’s approach – I wondered at times whether he had been reading Alfred Lorenz! – was not without its rewards. Was structure, however, too clarified, even simplified? For every revealing instance of opposition between different varieties of thematic material – Fricka’s disruptive, recitative-like ‘Wotan, Gemahl’, for instance, amidst Wotan’s orchestral dreaming of Valhalla – there were at least two passages that were distinctly subdued, almost as if concerned that the orchestra would threaten audibility of the singers. (It never did, by the way.) It was wonderful to hear so much harp detail as the gods crossed the rainbow bridge, and there is certainly good, Feuerbachian dramatic reason to emphasis the unreal beauty of the fortress and the path thereto. It need not, though, and surely should not come at the expense of its sacerdotal power. Novelistic, almost domesticated narrative sometimes threatened, in a dialectical turn, the integrity of musico-dramatic form. Yes, this is epic, yet it is anything but undisciplined. Das Rheingold, however, is a very difficult work to bring off: in some ways more so than the subsequent Ring dramas. Even Barenboim has sometimes erred a little too much towards Neue Sachlichkeit here. That there was a good deal to engage with critically, however, the foregoing merely illustrative, suggests that Jurowski’s Wagner is and will continue to be something to take seriously.

Alberich (Robert Hayward) and the Rhinemaidens (Sofia Fomina, Rowan Hellier, Lucie Špicková)

Vocally, as will almost always be the case, the bag was mixed. I could not resist the sense that, to a certain extent, at least Matthias Goerne’s Wotan was a little too much reliant on stock emotionally stunted sociopathy. Only towards the end, after the arrival of Anna Larsson’s typically excellent Erda, did he seem more truly ruminative. That is a crucial moment, of course, in his road towards Schopenhauerian conversion, but Wotan is never merely a figure of force. ‘Nicht durch Gewalt!’ is, after all, his injunction to Donner.  Robert Hayward’s Alberich went awry a few too many times; at his best, however, he proved darkly impressive. The giant pair of Matthew Rose and Brindley Sherratt also duly impressed as Fasolt and Fafner, the lovelorn brother genuinely moving, the sheer malevolence of Fafner at and after his death chilling indeed. Vsevolod Grivnov and Adrian Thompson offered detailed, dramatically alert ‘character tenor’ portrayals of Loge and Mime respectively, Allan Clayton’s light, bright-toned Froh a proper contrast. Michelle DeYoung’s Fricka, often imperious, was sometimes a little on the wobbly side, but there was little harm done in that respect, nor in the not dissimilar case of Lyubov Petrova’s cleanly sung Freia. Above all, there was a fine, almost Mozartian sense of conversation in passages of much dramatic to-and-fro. If only there had been a little more conventional drama. There nevertheless remained much to admire – and far from only because it happened at all.

Loge (Vsevolod Grivnov)

Salzburg Festival (5) - Wozzeck, 14 August 2017

Haus für Mozart

Images: Salzburg Festival / Ruth Walz
Margret (Frances Pappas) and Wozzeck (Matthias Goerne)

Wozzeck – Matthias Goerne

Drum Major – John Daszak

Andres – Mauro Peter

Captain – Gerhard Siegel

Doctor – Jens Larsen

First Apprentice – Tobias Schnambel

Second Apprentice – Huw Montague Rendall

Fool – Heinz Göhrig

Marie – Asmik Grigorian

Margret – Frances Pappas

Chorus solo – Burkhard Höft

Actors – Mélissa Guex, Andrea Fabi

Mimes – Claudia Carus, Gregor Schulz

William Kentridge (director)

Luc De Wit (co-director)

Sabine Theunissen (set deigns)

Greta Goiris (costumes)

Catherine Meyburgh (video)

Urs Schönebaum (lighting)

Kim Gunning (video operator)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir (chorus master: Wolfgang Götz)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

Marie (Asmik Grigorian) and Drum-Major (John Daszak)

Salzburg is certainly doing William Kentridge proud this summer: a new production of Wozzeck and an exhibition of his work, ‘Thick Time: Installations and Stagings’, split between the Rupertinum and the museum on the Mönchsberg, which together form the Museum der Moderne. The exhibition has also been seen at the Whitechapel Gallery; I missed it there. It will also be seen – or has: I am not quite sure which – at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk and Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery. The exhibition is certainly well worth seeing for its own sake. In some ways, though, I found it more revealing than the opera production itself, which I could not help but think relied a little too much upon an imposed association with the First World War – a little too easy? – and indeed upon figures and ideas from his earlier work. Both claims are, I am sure, debatable, but I was left relatively unmoved by the result – which is surely a problem with Wozzeck.

Distancing can doubtless work in different ways for different people. One person’s chilling alienation will be another’s ‘I could not relate to that’. For me, however – and I can hardly speak for anyone else – the device of placing Wozzeck outside the action, having him in some sense present it, at the opening switching on the slide projector from which so much of the setting is presented, leads to a staging more observed than experienced. If we do not share Wozzeck’s agonies, his mistreatment, if it is not even entirely clear whether he actually experiences them, then that is surely something of a loss. What worked very well in Kentridge’s Lulu, which I saw at ENO, seems here to be more a matter of going through the motions; what had been a powerful impression of information overload mirroring, even intensifying the score, here reduced to a display of battlefield maps with little evident motivation other than the fact that the Battle of Ypres had taken place a hundred years ago. Charcoal drawings, long a Kentridge staple, seemed just a little dark to glean anything much from, at least at a certain distance from the stage. (I was in the First Circle.) What of looking back to such events from after the war, as Berg did when completing it? There is certainly something to be said for that in principle; yet here, it comes across as more of a device than a dramatic strategy.

Perhaps ultimately, the problem, at least for me, is Kentridge’s apparent lack of interest in psychology, as discussed in a programme interview: ‘I never start with the psychology,’ he says, ‘When a singer says to me, “what am I thinking?’ I sawy, “well, let’s listen to the music and let’s look at what we see on stage rather than giving a pre-history’. It is not clear to me why there should be an either-or. Surely part of that ‘pre-history’ lies in the music and indeed in what happens on stage; nor is ‘the music’ somehow something separate from the drama and its associations, certainly not in Berg. ‘Characters are always more than you expect and different from what you expect,’ Kentridge goes on. Of course. Here, however, especially in the case of Marie, they seem, if anything, less than one had expected. Marie comes across as somewhat peripheral to the action, or at least to the wartime setting that threatens to overwhelm the action. Most of us, I hope, are opposed to war; still more of us think the Great War was a terrible thing. But is Wozzeck really about that; or, better, should it be? The weird, powerful crowd scenes, with marauding deformed survivors give a taste of what might have been, suggesting that yes, Wozzeck could be about this, and in retrospect too; the necessary contrasting, developing character introspection, however, seems strangely absent. Substituting a puppet for a child again seems too much of a stock device. Do we really want to avoid being shattered by his fate?

Wozzeck and Marie

That said, an impressive aspect of the evening as a total artwork – Gesamtkunstwerk, if you must – was that Vladimir Jurowski’s conducting seemed to me very much in keeping with Kentridge’s approach. One heard a wealth of detail, of musical process from the players of the Vienna Philharmonic, indeed to such an extent that any listener with musical training would be well placed to identify the particular closed form of any scene immediately. That was, famously, not Berg’s point, but that does not mean that there is no value in hearing the score differently, quite the contrary. What I missed from Jurowski’s conducting was a stronger sense of how the scenes connected; again, this need not be an either-or situation, and preferably should not be. Berg remains a son, or perhaps grandson, of Wagner – or should do.

Was there also a sense that he was keeping the excellent Vienna players – what sweetness of string tone in particular! – down? I suspect it may have depended upon where one was seated in the Haus für Mozart (the old Kleines Festspielhaus). For me, there were many occasions when I longed for the orchestra to be let off the leash. It is not just during the interludes that the real, the deepest drama lies there; as with Wagner, it always does. Others, however, complained that they could not hear the singers, which certainly was not the case for me. Matthias Goerne did a good deal to supply some of the introspection seemingly missing from the staging. A Lieder-singer’s approach tends to be just the thing for Wozzeck, if not necessarily the only way; this was no exception. Asmik Grigorian sang beautifully, a fine Marie, by any standards. If only the staging had not left her somewhat marooned: just standing there, singing, seemingly having to act for herself. John Daszak navigated well the balance between character and caricature in the role of the Drum Major. Gerhard Siegel and Jens Larsen both offered keenly observed – insofar as they were permitted – performances as the Captain and the Doctor. Frances Pappas’s Marget greatly impressed, as, still more did, Mauro Peter’s beautifully sung Andres; in both cases, I was left wishing they had had more to do. Choral singing was excellent, impeccably well prepared, it seemed, by Ernst Raffelsberger. If I did not feel that I had been moved as much, nor as deeply, as I should have been, it was no fault of the cast. And I was certainly made to think.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Goerne/Trifonov: Berg, Schumann, Wolf, Shostakovich, and Brahms, 11 August 2017

Haus für Mozart

Berg – Four Songs, op.2

Schumann – Dichterliebe, op.48

Wolf – Three Michelangelo Songs

Shostakovich – Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, op.145: ‘Dante’; ‘Death’; ‘Night’

Brahms – Four Serious Songs, op.121

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Daniil Trifonov (piano)

This proved an outstanding recital, at least as much for Daniil Trifonov’s searching, protean pianism as for Matthias Goerne’s singing. Such a partnership, something beyond what one might ‘ordinarily’ expect during the concert season, is just what a festival such as Salzburg should be about. Likewise the programming: excellent in itself, yet also offering connections to broader themes on offer in the festival.

Goerne is singing Wozzeck here – on which, more later in the week – so Berg’s op.2 songs could, if one wished, be understood as anticipatory. More importantly, they made for a fine opening to this programme, the Hebbel setting ‘Schlafen, Schlafen, nichts als Schlafen’ drowsy, somnolent in the best way, emerging and yet never quite emerging from that state of half-awakedness. The languor one heard and felt had something of Debussy and early Schoenberg to it, yet could never quite be reduced to them or indeed to any other influence; this was Berg. Above all, it was founded in the piano part, above which words could then do their work. In its Parsfalian leisure-cum-torpor, one almost felt it to be ‘lit from behind’. ‘Schlafend trägt man mich’ continued in a recognisable line, yet initially lighter, soon more involved and questioning. Trifonov showed himself keenly aware of the importance of specific pitches and their repetition; later Berg beckoned already. ‘Nun ich der Riesen Stärksten überwand’ and ‘Warm die Lüfte’ continued the developmental idea, (re)uniting, intensifying earlier tendencies – and again the importance of specific pitch, here in the bells tolling and nightingale singing in the piano part.

Dichterliebe benefited from the alchemy of no clear break: Schumann’s song-cycle emerged from Berg’s songs and retrospectively announced that that was where they had always been heading. From the very outset, the opening ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’, the limpidity of Trifonov’s piano playing was to die for, the delicacy of Goerne’s song also spot on. Magically slow, this was something to savour, without a hint of narcissism. ‘Aus meinen Tränen sprießen’ developed not only, it seemed from its predecessor, but from Berg’s songs too, not least in its nightingale song. Nothing here was formulaic, nothing taken as read: the voice took on the quality of something approaching an instrumental chamber music partner to the piano in ‘ich will meine Seele tauchen’, save of course for the words that both heightened and questioned that sense. The young Wotan seemed to appear on stage for ‘Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome’, his piano partner striking in dark, stark simplicity (however artful). The piano’s taunting cruelty in ‘Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen’ could match anything in Schubert: implacable, heartless, almost ‘objective’. It was, moreover, an unquestionably post-Schubertian agony here – distended, just a little, unerringly judged – that characterised the ensuing ‘Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen’. ‘Am leuchten Sommermorgen’ brought that summer morning to refracted life courtesy of Trifonov, the piano part’s passing notes returning us to Berg, perhaps even going beyond him, whilst the piano chords in ‘Ich hab’ im Traum gewidmet’ spoke in almost Lisztian fashion, not unlike his Il penseroso. The strange tricks and consolations of dreams that followed (‘Allnächtlich im Traume’) seemed almost to prepare the way, following the weakened ebullience of ‘Aus alten Märchen’, for those two extraordinarily final postludes. They spoke at least as keenly as any words, even those of Heine.

Liszt, unsurprisingly, came more strongly and unquestionably to the fore in Wolf’s Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo. His harmonic language and its bitter self-destruction haunted ‘Wohl denk’ ich oft’. Quite rightly, words took the lead in ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ and ‘Fühlt meine Seele’, seemingly inciting Wagnerian harmonies through what, in context, sounded most Schopenhauerian language. The two songs’ different character registered as strongly as what they held in common.

Trifonov’s quasi-verbal directness of utterance, especially in the bass register, struck me especially powerfully in the three Shostakovich Michelangelo songs that followed. It was as if the ability to ‘speak’ were being returned with interest. In ‘Dante’ in particular, Goerne brought to our attention Shostakovich the seer and the critic. That importance ascribed to particular pitches in Berg seemed to haunt the world of Shostakovich too, as if to remind us of what might have been. Once again, however incorrect this priority in the world of mere empiricism, the words of the following songs seemed to grow out of the piano’s wordless speech. ‘Night’ (Noč’) evinced an unfamiliar familiarity, musical and verbal. ‘Hush, my friend, why awaken me?’ Why indeed?

That illusory ‘timeliness’ – what could be more ‘timely’ – of Brahms in ‘archaic’ mode proved especially striking in the Vier ernste Gesänge. Trifonov’s understanding and communication of the piano parts was properly generative, even occasionally verging on a quasi-objective autonomy, an ontological frame within which the Biblical words might be intoned and considered. ‘Ich wandte mich und sahe an alle’ nevertheless spoke of subjectivity, of a late verbal Intermezzo that more than hinted at Webern. An earlier German Romanticism hung in the air, and yet clearly had passed: sad, perhaps, but Goerne’s Ecclesiastes Preacher would surely have understood. An almost Bachian embrace of death, albeit with a more Romantic sense of tragedy underlying it, characterised Goerne’s delivery in ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du,’ flickering half-lights again very much from the world of the late piano pieces. ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete’ afforded a climax that was truly Pauline in its depth, complexity, and sheer difficulty. The best theologians will sometimes, as Brahms shows us, be agnostic, even atheist, albeit in a strenuous sense: more Nietzsche than, God help us, Richard Dawkins and his ilk. This was Brahms’s reckoning with how things were, just as much as that of the epistle writer. And so it was with the recital as a whole: a reckoning necessarily both final and not.

Salzburg Festival (7) - Goerne/Wang/Matthes - Brahms, 9 August 2016

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Brahms – Die Schöne Magelone, op.33

Matthias Goerne (baritone)
Yuja Wang (piano)
Ulrich Matthes (narrator)

 

I had not initially been intending to attend this concert, but, owing to a mix-up, stupidly returned my ticket to hear Grigory Sokolov’s recital; by the time, I realised my mistake, the concert was sold out, as it continued to be until the day itself. I therefore bought myself a ticket for what seemed to be the next best option that evening. Why mention that at all? Partly to explain why I think I should have got more out of the concert, had I been more fully prepared.

 

For this was a performance of Brahms’s ‘song-cycle’, Die schöne Magelone, with narrative coherence provided by readings from Ludwig Tieck’s romance, the Liebesgeschichte der schönen Magelone und des Grafen Peter von Provence. Ulrich Matthes’s delivery of those readings was, to my second- or third-language ears quite outstanding. He did not try to upstage the musical performances, but nor was he unduly reticent; he understood – on one case, with wry, infectious amusement – the particular tone of Tieck’s verse, its direction, and its preparing the way, in this particular context, for Brahms’s setting of the songs within the romance, one per chapter. I should have benefited from a translation, whether in titles or in the programme, but only the songs were translated. It was certainly good practice for my German-language skills, and the language is not in itself especially difficult, but I could not help but think that an international festival such as Salzburg might have made provision for people in my situation and, indeed, for those with less or no German. There were, sadly, quite a few departures from the hall – accompanied, needless, to say by still-more disruptive tutting from some of those remaining.

 

None of that offers any reflection, of course, upon the readings themselves, which I should have loved to hear again, having more firmly an idea in my head of the direction and nature of the verse. Nor does it offer reflection upon the musical performances from Matthias Goerne and Yuja Wang. I did not find them especially well matched; nor did I find Wang’s piano tone especially well suited to this particular repertoire. That is perhaps more a matter of taste than anything else – however unfashionable this may be, Brahms will probably always retain at least a veneer of mahogany for me – but Wang’s bright, unapologetically Steinway-ish tone sounded to me more appropriate to Rachmaninov, say, than to Brahms. By the same token, though, there was much to admire in the clarity of her playing; there was no muddiness here. I liked the post-Schubertian lilt both she and Goerne imparted to ‘Sind es Schermzen’, for instance. However, for the most part she seemed somewhat withdrawn as an ‘accompanist’, rather than an active participant.

 

Goerne, by contrast, offered keen narration, far more dramatically committed than he had seemed in the Kindertotenlieder a couple of nights earlier. He placed Brahms not only as a successor to Schubert but to Beethoven too; indeed, in the aforementioned ‘Sind es Schmerzen’, the dialectic between, say, the heritage of  a song such as Erlkönig and that of the Beethoven Lieder Goerne had recently sung at the Wigmore Hall was vividly, dramatically apparent. A subtle, never exaggerated sense of near-Wagnerian – yet only near-Wagnerian – intoxication at times, for instance during ‘Wie soll ich die Freude’, proved another welcome ingredient to the mix. The conflicts of ‘Muß es eine Trennung geben’, the playfulness of ‘Sulima’ – no Orientalism here, thank God! – and the genuine optimism, even happiness of ‘Wie froh und frisch’ marked important stations on our procession to the close. And yet again it was Beethoven, in ‘Treue Lieder dauert lange’, who came to mind in something approaching ecstatic conclusion. Even for me, a non-native-speaker, the additional context had proved invaluable.

 

Salzburg Festival (5) - Goerne/VPO/Mehta - Pärt, Mahler, and Bruckner, 7 August 2016

Grosses Festspielhaus

Arvo Pärt – Swansong

Mahler – Kindertotenlieder
Bruckner – Symphony no.4 in E-flat major (1878-80 version)

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

The Vienna Philharmonic’s Salzburg concerts are generally – rightly – considered highlights of the Festival. This particular concert, however, proved somewhat disappointing. With the outer works, the problems lay, at least for me, as much with the works themselves as with the performances, whereas with Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, the performance was strangely subdued, although far from without merit.

 

Arvo Pärt’s 2013 Swansong left me wondering what on earth Zubin Mehta and the VPO were doing performing such trite music. It sounded like odds and ends that had been rejected from incidental music for the pilot episode of a mid-1990s Channel 4 television drama. With added bells, of course. Perhaps ‘Sibelius without the jokes’ might be another way of thinking about it. The ending came from the realm of atrocious film scores. It was relatively brief, but not brief enough.

 

Matthias Goerne joined the assembled throng for the Mahler cycle. ‘Nun will die Sonn’s o hell aufgeh’n’ immediately offered a duly mournful contrast. It was an intimate performance, but was it perhaps too intimate? Mehta’s habit of keeping down the strings to a level of near-inaudibility, both here and elsewhere, first intrigued – the music at first sounded oddly Weill-like – but then baffled and, finally, merely irritated. I loved the pinpoint precision, however, of the VPO’s resident triangle virtuoso. And Mehta’s flexibility in tempo was welcome, never arbitrary. The beauty of sadness and the sadness of beauty registered somewhat in ‘Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen,’ but again I wished they had registered more strongly. There is something to be said for a veering away from Expressionist tendencies here, although I was a little surprised that Goerne should be doing so; alas, I was not entirely clear what we heard in its place. ‘Wenn dein Mütterlein’ benefited from an exquisite English horn solo. In the ensuing ‘Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen’, Mehta’s balance between ongoing lilt and its interruptions was splendid; orchestral balances, however, remained odd. Finally came ‘In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus’: there were intriguing presentiments of Webern to be heard, malevolence all round. This, I thought, was the strongest song as performed, exhibiting real anger without ranting (whether vocal or orchestral). At least it was, until the strings fell apart: disappointing from any orchestra, but particularly from the VPO.

 

Perhaps more rehearsal time had been devoted to Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony. At any rate, the orchestra seemed to relish this music far more than it had Mahler. As previously mentioned, my problems here lay with the work itself, which still seemed to me to descend in typically lumbering early-ish Bruckner fashion into lengthy incoherence. There was, though, much to admire, even to enjoy, in the first movement, not least the unutterably tender opening horn solo set against shimmering Vienna strings. When flutes and oboes joined, one could almost see a Teutonic forest in one’s mind’s imagination. (Mehta, I should add, was conducting the symphony from memory.) Then, of course, the music went its own, different, all-too-typically unison way. The development offered some wonderfully hushed playing early on: true mystery. Mehta, moreover, did as good a job as any conductor I have heard in having us believe in some logic guiding Bruckner’s path. He summoned up imposing grandeur, the most golden of orchestral tones too. I was also struck by how different the second group sounded during the recapitulation. Horns sounded truly tremendous at the close.

 

There was a winningly post-Schubertian sense of onward tread to the slow movement. I especially loved the fine viola playing (arco) against other pizzicato strings, balance spot on throughout. Some of the more bucolic writing even hinted at a naïve Mahler, if you can imagine such a thing. Must the movement really be quite so lengthy and repetitive, though? In early Bruckner, the scherzos almost always strike me as the most convincing movements – and so again it was here. This had depth whilst remaining relatively light of foot. Mendelssohn it was not, but how could it be? And even when Mehta slowed the tempo considerably, a strong sense of line persisted: rhythm was key here. The dullness of the trio material was not helped by additional dragging. After such listlessness, the return of the scherzo was perhaps even more of a relief than it should have been.

 

And then, there came the seemingly interminable finale. It was performed with great conviction, which yet failed to convince me. Does the music hang together at all? It seems simply, or not so simply, to be a series of blind alleys, blind not out of playfulness, still less of irony, but out of structural incompetence. Perhaps I am missing something. I keep trying; I really do. It was not, however, to be revealed to me on this occasion. There were some truly wonderful orchestral moments, but I could not tell you what they had to do with anything else. The closing bars, however, had beauty and dignity; the players seemed to love and to understand this music, even if I did not.

 

Goerne/Bezuidenhout - Beethoven, 27 June 2016

Wigmore Hall

Resignation, WoO 149

An die Hoffnung, op.32
Lied aus der Ferne, WoO 137
Mailied, op.52 no.4
Der Liebende, WoO 139
Six Gellert-Lieder, op.48
An die Hoffnung, op.94
Adelaide, op.46
Wonne der Wehmut, op.83 no.1
Das Liedchen von der Ruhe, op.52 no.3
An die Geliebte, WoO 140 (1814 revision)
An die ferne Geliebte, op.98

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Kristian Bezuidenhout (fortepiano)

 

Any regular readers I might have might find themselves a little surprised to see me writing on a Beethoven recital with fortepiano. I confess that, when I first looked at the Wigmore Hall website, I saw ‘piano’ and assumed that Kristian Bezuidenhout would be playing on a modern instrument. Players do ‘switch’, after all. Then, having arranged to go, I told myself to be open-minded. I am glad that I did, since Bezuidenhout’s playing was often a joy; indeed, in many respects, rather to my surprise, I found him better suited than Matthias Goerne to these songs. If there were times when I missed the fuller tone of a modern Steinway, or even better, a Bösendorfer, my ears adjusted to the sound of the 1824 Graf instrument, and I listened for its virtues rather than making myself cross about what was not there. (We have all had enough exercises in futility for a while!) Goerne, by contrast, whilst offering committed, intelligent performances, did not seem to me quite in his element; he needs more gloom, more tragedy.

Resignation, then, was not a bad place to start. This late song (well, relatively late: 1817) certainly sounded resigned in a subtle performance from both artists. I am not quite sure what happened with An die Hoffnung, op.32; what Goerne sang was certainly not, in the first stanza, what was written in the programme. I do not have a score to hand to check. Anyway, the variation between stanzas was well handled, Bezuidenhout arguably first among equals in that respect. I missed greater depth in the 1809 Lied aus der Ferne, at least to start with. That said, the transformation of what initially struck me as mere prettiness into something more akin to the ‘namenlose Freude’ of Fidelio, and onward to good humour, was again skilfully handled. I was a little unsure about a certain motoric quality to some of the keyboard playing in the Goethe Mailied. It was clearly an interpretative decision, since Bezuidenhout would then quickly, pleasingly yield; I am just not quite sure why. A Schubertian tinge to Der Liebende was most welcome.

 

The Gellert Lieder suffer from dreadful words, the harking back of their theology to the eighteenth century almost, if not quite, the least of their problems. There is musical interest, though, even if it is not maintained consistently. The goodness, ‘Güte’, of the opening ‘Bitten’ came across strongly, hearteningly, and there was a nicely declamatory quality, not just in the vocal line, to ‘Die Liebe des Nächsten’. ‘Vom Tode’ is much closer to Goerne home territory, and so it sounded, looking forward not only to Winterreise but even to Brahms’s Four Serious Songs. The next two songs are much more backward-looking; for me, they underline above all that Beethoven was much less a song-composer, or much less consistently so, than Schubert. The closing Bußlied, however, is more ‘Romantic’, even if the words constrain Beethoven; at least if we take the Missa solemnis to be what his religious thought was really concerned with. Bezuidenhout navigated with ease the tricky twists and turns, a sure and often charming guide.

 

Another An die Hoffnung, op.94, opened the second half. The immediate note of contrasting desolation was promising; the subsequent turn to Fidelio-land also convinced. However, the tessitura did not always seem well-suited to Goerne’s voice, and the song is not without its passages of dullness. The lovely early Adelaide was much more of a pleasure, Bezuidenhout revelling in its quiet, post-Mozartian exultancy. Innigkeit was very much the order of the day, greatly welcome, in Wonne der Wehmut and Das Liedchen von der Ruhe. An die Geliebte offered a lighter interlude prior to the moment we had all been waiting for.

An die ferne Geliebte, one of the greatest and most underrated of song-cycles, did not disappoint. ‘Auf dem Hügel sitz ich, spähend…’ it begins, and so it sounded, as if Goerne were sitting, gazing. Bezuidenhout drew attention to the differentiation of ‘accompaniment’ in each stanza. Sometimes, again, I wished for something his instrument could not do, but not that often. His handling of the transitions between songs could hardly be faulted: vivid in its own narrative quality. The lightness of the opening stanza to the third song, ‘Leichte Segler in den Höhen’, offered welcome contrast; so, to that, did what came thereafter. When we reached May – ‘Es kehret der Maien’ – it really sounded like it, at least in the piano part. The desolation of its final line, ‘Und Tränen sind all ihr Gewinnen’, was very much Goerne’s, though. The noble simplicity of the closing ‘Nimm sie hin den, diese Lieder’ showed both artists at their best, the return of the opening theme in the piano part as heart-stopping as it should be.

 

Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 13 November 2015

Images: Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Gun-Brit Barkmin
Klytämnestra – Anna Larsson
Orest – Matthias Goerne
Aegisth – Herbert Lippert
First Maid – Monika Bohinec
Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova
Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel
Fourth Maid – Caroline Wenborne
Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi
Overseer – Donna Ellen
Young Servant – Thomas Ebenstein
Old Servant – Hans Peter Kammerer
Orest’s tutor – Il Hong
Confidante – Simina Ivan
Trainbearer – Aura Twarowska

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)
Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)
Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus of the Vienna State Opera

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Peter Schneider (conductor)

 

It almost seems wrong to be thinking and writing about a visit to the opera in the wake of the Paris attacks last night. Yet, beyond the justified claim that we should not be deterred from going about our business – there are, I think, some exceptions, but let us leave them on one side for now – we should also remember that art speaks of the human condition. It enables us to deal with what goes on around us: not, I hope, as mere escape, but as an exploration of some of the most fundamental issues with which we grapple. Strauss’s æstheticism continues to challenge us – and so it should. It will do so in different ways at different times, and that is all to the good.

 

Whilst Elektra is far too important a work to be simply, or even mostly, ‘about’ one particular character or artist, Nina Stemme was clearly a principal attraction in a very strong cast. She might not be how we all ‘imagine’ Elektra, but such a situation can often present a justified challenge to our preconceptions. Stemme proved tireless, constantly musical and, just as important, constantly communicative with Hofmannsthal’s words, and a fine actress. It was interesting to note, and I do not think this was simply a matter of acclimatisation on my part, that she looked more ‘like’ the Stemme we know from other performances as the evening went on. To start with, Marianne Glittenberg’s costume cunningly doing its work here, I am not sure that I should have recognised her with my eyes alone. A Lieder-like approach to text as music and words, though, marked out her artistry. And the accuracy, volume, and tonal quality of her climaxes – there are many! – would have given Birgit Nilsson a run for her money, although the sound is of course quite different. Indeed, Stemme struck an excellent balance between strength of character and necessary – for survival – ability to adapt, wheedling herself, if only temporarily, back into the affections of her mother and detested stepfather.

 

With the exception of a weakly-sung Aegisth, a part often given to former Siegfrieds – surely Vienna could have done better than this! – the cast was excellent. All of the ‘smaller’ roles were very well taken, attesting to the casting in depth that a great company can offer. For me, Thomas Ebenstein’s lyric tenor, as agile as the singer on stage, and the warm humanity of Ildikó Raimondi’s Fifth Maid – what a gift of a role! – stood out, but this is definitely a case of almost all deserving prizes.

 

Gun-Brit Barkmin grasped what I assume to have been Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s concept – and of course, the work’s concept, at least implicitly – of Chrysothemis as a young woman repressing, somewhat kinkily, her adulthood, Marianne Glittenberg’s over-sized, little-girl costume again making the point strongly in visual terms. Barkmin grasped it and ran with it, helpless, but perhaps – we could never quite tell – knowingly so, again as a survival mechanism in impossible times, domestically and politically, whilst maintaining as impressive control over Strauss’s musical lines as she had Berg’s in Wozzeck last month. Barkmin was impressive in Semyon Bychkov’s magnificent Proms performance of Elektra in 2014; here she was more so still and, crucially, offering a different reading according to context.

 

Anna Larsson’s portrayal of Klyämnestra was also in its way a revelation. I have grown so accustomed to thinking of this wonderful contralto voice ‘simply’ as the earth-voice of sincerity and truth in the Ring and in Mahler, that it came as quite a jolt to hear and indeed to see her in so different a role. Again, visually I should not have recognised her. I am not sure I have heard a true contralto sing the part before; it is, of course, rare nowadays to hear a true contralto at all. Yet, not only was the musical result beautiful, although not too beautiful, Larsson’s stage presence matched her vocal artistry, again in a way that confounded narrow expectations based solely upon narrow, personal experience.

 

Matthias Goerne proved a chilling, psychopathic Orest. When I had heard him previously, his approach had been, for want of a better word, more ‘intellectual’. Here, again apparently grasping the needs of the moment, this undoubtedly intelligent artist sounded splendidly instinctive. (It is not that the two are polar opposites, or in any sense exclusive, but they are often treated as if they are such.) He sounded and looked – the costume initially concealed him more than Elektra’s had her – like a voice from beyond: almost a male Erda, perhaps a Charon or a Pluto. We could not but doubt that he brought death, nor that he was deeply damaged by experience. The culmination of the Recognition Scene, in which brother and sister relied as much upon their sense of touch as their sense of sight – perhaps they have seen far too much truly to be able to see any more – proved both moving and provocative in the expectation of something incestuous, only to be thwarted, not the least intelligent of Laufenberg’s double moves.

Peter Schneider seemed almost a different conductor from when I had heard him conduct the work, disappointingly, in Dresden almost a year ago. Everything was much sharper, and the Vienna orchestra was in far better shape than its Straussian rival. (Perhaps, last December, that was something to do with Christian Thielemann having had the pick of the bunch the previous evening, but such variation remains difficult to account for entirely.) Strauss’s score danced with exuberance and with sickly longing; it lingered only too long early in what seemed almost an interminable Recognition Scene, a rare lapse. The phantasmagorical array of colours, harmonic as well as instrumental, which the composer conjures up was well served by the Vienna orchestra. If it were not quite at the level of inspiration of Daniele Gatti with these players in Salzburg in 2010, it was still a very fine orchestral performance, that golden Vienna string tone unmistakeable. There were, moreover, a good few passages which seemed, tantalisingly, to reach out towards Erwartung.

Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. I say ‘for the work’, since most Elektra sets seem to end up looking more or less the same. There is an element of the familiarly granitic and fascistic in Rolf Glittenberg’s designs, but they do not overwhelm as often they do. (Not that I am arguing such designs should not; it is not, however, the only way.) Accentuating the domesticity, as it were, seems very much in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal Freudian approach to the myth. And death hangs over the piece with a visual stench that would pack quite a punch, could I bring myself to mix metaphors quite so flagrantly. (If I am shamelessly having my cake and eating it in the preceding sentence, so, in many respects does the work itself.)

 

A lift connects the palace proper to the courtyard, although we do not necessarily notice it to begin with, the action very much taking charge of itself. (I am not sure that I had previously noticed quite so strong a kinship between the opening scene and its sister in Maeterlinck’s, though not Debussy’s, Pelléas.) It is in that that Klytämnestra descends (and Aegisth never manages to ascend). Behind the glass, she already seems encased: almost a taxidermist’s objet d’art. Her entrance – with that music, she simply has to make an entrance – thus proved, if one can have such a thing, a slightly understated coup de théâtre. If I mention her having a wheelchair and Elektra a suitcase, cries of ‘cliché’ will doubtless issue forth – and often, I should sympathise. But Elektra prevaricating over packing her bags is hardly an inappropriate idea here and, more importantly, the specific use of the wheelchair offers an interesting and indeed surprising commentary not only upon Klytämnestra, but also on her relationship with her daughter, which after all lies at the heart of the drama. The queen does not need it at all, or at least she sometimes realises that she does not. She is in many respects keeping up appearances, although for whom? Her retinue? Which way might they turn, if the going gets tough? Their indecision later on subtly underlines the point. Is there an ‘outside’ the palace and its environs? Is the queen’s act for them? We are not sure, and that seems to me quite an interesting reading of Strauss and Hofmannsthal on Sophocles: extending their seeming lack of interest in the political and turning it in – or should that be ‘out’? – upon itself. Her confidant and trainbearer inject her with something. Who is controlling whom? And yet, when they are out of the way, when finally she can settle herself to speak with her daughter as something approaching – at least in House of Atreus terms – her mother, Klytämnestra can walk freely: discuss, perhaps even take some agency for the self-interpretation of, her dreams. Elektra at one point takes her place in the wheelchair. Is that not in a sense right, given all she has suffered? And yet, she cannot of course remain there, or all would fail.

I have dwelled upon that particular scene, since it seemed to me unusually central to interpretation of the work and production on this evening. Its presentation is also typical of Laufenberg’s impressively text-based approach to the work. He is not necessarily a director to set off music against words – often a fruitful approach with Strauss – but not everyone can offer the layered approach, at least all the time, of a Stefan Herheim. (This is yet another work in which I should love to see what he might accomplish.) Laufenberg’s, however, is a thoughtful, faithful, yet far from subservient reading, to which I should readily return. The treatment of Elektra’s Dance is a case in point, and here there was perhaps a deeper engagement with the music too. I still think that, as I wrote when discussing that Proms performance, to speak, as Adorno did, of the discontinuity ‘between the wildness of most of Strauss’s music in Elektra and its blissfully triadic conclusion’ is wilful. However, there is an element of (false?) relapse here; the emergence of strikingly beautiful, untarnished, unreal (?) young waltzers, offering the banal hope of a utopian future amidst Mycenaean devastation, knocked sidewise by the unexpected turn of the music and carrying Elektra off with them, makes a point I thought not un-Adornian, although perhaps more fruitful. What, then, are we to make of the shell-shocked Chrysothemis, who remains?