Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 5 July 2026

Images: Stephan Rabold

Bassa Selim – Bülent Ceylan
Konstanze – Adela Zaharia
Blonde – Serafina Starke
Belmonte – Siyabonga Maqungo
Pedrillo – Michael Laurenz
Osmin – David Steffens

New version and presentation – Bülent Ceylan, Andrea Moses, Michael Höppner
Director – Andrea Moses
Set designs – Raimund Bauer
Costumes – Anja Rabes
Lighting – Irene Selka
Video – Andrea Gabriel
Dramaturgy – Michael Höppner, Detlef Giese

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

No one is perfect, although Mozart’s music often is. One of many differences between the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s previous and current musical directors is the latter’s apparent lack of interest in the operas of Mozart. Christian Thielemann’s ongoing rejuvenation of the house’s record in Strauss’s dramatic works has already offered some compensation. Both he and Daniel Barenboim have of course long since proved themselves distinguished, if strikingly different, Wagnerians. It was, in his context, a heartening development to see the house offer a new production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail—not, I think, a work Barenboim ever conducted in full, although he was known to offer its overture in Busoni’s conclusion. (Barenboim’s advocacy of his fellow adoptive Berliner Busoni’s music is another aspect of the old regime yet to be reprised, but there is time.) That, however, was before reckoning with the new ‘version’ served up by director Andrea Moses, dramaturge Michael Höppner, and comedian Bülent Ceylan. In what proved to be an increasingly depressing evening, there were important redeeming features: the singers and, still more, the players of the Staatskapelle Berlin. The abiding memory, alas, will be of one of the most important musical works in German theatrical history having been treated with undisguised contempt by a director and dramaturge who seemed not even to have bothered to engage with it in the first place. 

Billing this as an encounter between comedy and opera immediately posed the question (or rather, sadly did not) of what the relationship between the two might hitherto have been. Have there not been a few such ‘encounters’, or rather more than that, before? It is always worth, though, trying to approach something on its own terms: not that those terms cannot be criticised, but one will better criticise if one has discovered what they might have been. In that, I am afraid I can at best prove only partially successful. Ceylan essentially set the parameters for the evening by introducing it as a comedy show, ‘Entführung Live’. The idea of him as host drifting in and out of the character of the Bassa Selim is not an uninteresting one. Something improvised might, moreover, have sat in fruitful conflict with the work and the more general aesthetic of Vienna’s Nationalsingspiel. If anything, though, the tyranny of a new script proved more of a problem, Ceylan initially speaking as if this were the premiere, only later referring to that in the past tense. Whilst, to an extent, the lack of projection may have been part of the joke, incomprehensibility (to some) of Turkish German and Mannheim dialect the point, I am not sure it can be let off quite so easily. Moreover, for an event that prided itself on speaking to an international audience, the lack of titles, if not for the comedy then at least for the ‘new’ dialogue, was odd. If non-German-speakers, or indeed those of us with some German who nonetheless may have struggled at times, would have known anything, it would surely be the musical texts—the only part of the ‘action’ with titles in English or German. Ceylan was at least respectful to the musical artists, at least until the third act, in which his activity involved a good deal of speaking over them. Melodrama, I suppose, one might call it, but the game show element of highlighting apparen members of the audience – presumably in reference, in one case, to that recent Coldplay concert – had nothing to do with Die Entführung, even in its newly ‘presented’ state.

That said, he did what he was engaged for, and largely did it well. Ire should be reserved for Moses and her dramaturge. For what the production itself was ultimately concerned with remained to me elusive: very little, so far as I could tell, beyond this ‘encounter’. ‘Love’, perhaps, yet without any real questioning of what that might be—or have been. Characterisation went out of the window; there was some very odd direction of Konstanze in ‘Martern aller Arten’, in which she suddenly seemed turned on by the whole farrago, only immediately to forget that. Also absent was much sense of place, beyond a slightly baffling setting of much of it on a ship. Worst of all, the set design at one point revealed an offensive caricature of a woman’s eyes peering out from behind a burqa, hardly ever seen in Turkey, then or now: Orientalism and, let us be honest, Islamophobia far worse than anything in the work, by twenty-first- let alone eighteenth-century standards. (In her incoherent Staatsoper Meistersinger, she arbitrarily incorporated ‘sinister’ Arab figures towards the close, so there seems to be something of a pattern, both undiscriminating and, well, something worse.) The final moral, according to T-shirts thrust upon actors and chorus, appeared to be that everyone loved Bassa Selim. Hmmm, maybe. And even if true: is that it? 

There were occasional suggestions that the perennial question ‘was its deutsch? / ‘what is German?’ – we have all been there – might be a theme, but it was so poorly sustained and, worse, haplessly addressed, that it would have been better left alone. If you start from the smug liberal standpoint that your values, more or less anti-historical, stand at such a level of perfection that they are all anyone has needed, currently needs, or will need, you are unlikely to advance politically and certain not to advance dramatically. To quote the unlamented Kamala Harris, ‘I’m speaking.’ Harris’s notorious refusal to acknowledge the right of protestors to be heard, let alone the justice of their cause, indeed points to the ‘elephant in the room’ chez Moses et al. in a city and country that proudly flies Israeli flags (antisemitically described by the present Federal Chancellor as ‘Judenfahne’) from public buildings. If you want a contemporary Orientalist theme, it is staring you in the face, but that would require a little courage. What we heard instead were less calls to Lessing’s gospel of tolerance, let alone modern diversity, than of self-congratulation that Berlin first and Germany second had advanced to their current stage of enlightenment. In reality, Moses offered no real concept beyond self-congratulation and enabling sections of the audience to congratulate themselves too, and strikingly little interest in, or even awareness of, the work. The craft of actual stage direction seemed more notable for absence than presence (unless, clutching at straws, the impression of non-direction were itself a misguided aesthetic choice). 

Enough—though enough did not come soon enough. There were, as I said, aspects of the evening’s ‘entertainment’ truly to praise. One would not hear superior Mozart orchestral playing anywhere in the world; one would almost certainly hear significantly worse. Woodwind solo playing, duetting, and more was exquisite beyond words. (Much here, for better or worse, was beyond words.) The Staatskapelle strings, though, were every bit as fine, eschewing any hint of what passes today, quite erroneously, for ‘period style’, whilst as alive and alert in the present as one could hope for: unquestionably far more so than anything in the production and its ‘presentation’. What cavils I had lay with sometimes fussy direction by Thomas Guggeis. Whilst there was much to admire in his contribution – if not his unwillingness or perhaps inability to put his foot down in cases of the most egregious directorial intervention – then he could sometimes hold the orchestra down a little too ‘prettily’. Moreover, his participation in the contemporary fad of fortepiano ‘commentary’ was, alas, all too predictable in nature. When it was anything more than tracing an orchestral line on the keyboard in front of him, it came to still less, one particularly embarrassing moment excerpts from Mozart elsewhere, albeit with ‘jazzy’ (certainly not jazz-like) syncopation. Still, when he conducted, he mostly conducted very well and, crucially, let the orchestra mostly speak for itself. 

The orchestra’s twin partner in virtue, the opera chorus, acquitted itself well too, whatever the trials presented to it onstage. So too did the cast, headed by a sweet-toned, tender Belmont in Siyabonga Maqungo and the almost instrumentally conceived Konstanze of Adela Zaharia (once past a few balance problems early on). Both made their coloratura dramatically expressive, insofar as Moses permitted, as well as musically glittering. So too did the outstanding Blonde of Serafina Starke, a member of the Staatsoper’s International Opera Studio, and her well-matched Pedrillo, Michael Laurenz, as alert to the many demands placed on him onstage as by the score. David Steffens’s Osmin was also first-class: surprisingly subtle, again insofar as permitted. 

There's the rub, alas. I suppose one might try to mount a defence rooted in the genre banished by Joseph II’s theatrical reforms, founded in the ideas of Mozart’s friend Joseph von Sonnenfels. Might we see this as a return to the world of Hanswurst and, especially, his improvisational theatre? Sonnenfels’s – by extension, Joseph’s – objections had related to impurity of language, that is it was not (literary) German enough; dramatic triviality; and extensive extemporisation, that is in terms we might now employ, that it did not present a dramatic ‘work’. Its improvisatory nature, shows often only attaining literary form in their musical items, also rendered it extremely difficult to censor. But no, my heart is not in it. Ultimately, in any particular instance, there are no rules. Do whatever you want; a canonical, if slightly precarious, work will survive. But make sure you know what it is you are dealing with and do it well; otherwise, still more than mocking the work, it will mock you. If only this Entführung were anything like as ‘live’ as it thought it was.

Daphne, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 20 January 2024

Peneios – René Pape
Gaea – Anna Kissjudit
Daphne – Vera-Lotte Boecker
Leukippos – Johan Krogius
Apollo – David Butt Philip
Four Shepherds – Arttu Kataja, Florian Hoffmann, Adam Kutuy, Friedrich Hamel
Two Maids – Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka

Director, set design, costumes, lighting – Romeo Castellucci
Revival director – José Dario Innella
Choreography – Evelin Facchini
Assistant director – Maxi Menja Lehmann
Set design assistance – Lisa Behensky, Alessio Valmori
Costume assistance – Clara Rosina Straßer, Theresa Wilson
Lighting assistance – Marco Giusti

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Daphne (Vera-Lotte Boecker)

Seen first last year, Romeo Castellucci’s production of Daphne receives its first revival. In one sense, it could hardly be more timely, snow falling outside in wintry landscapes across Berlin and beyond, as it does onstage. Yet that immediately presents a greater untimeliness to the mise-en-scène, for a modern snowscape seems perversely distant from the Thessalian pastoral of Joseph Gregor’s libretto (and Strauss’s imagination). It is beautiful, of course, and with Castellucci, matters aesthetic have a tendency to take on a life, approaching the painterly, of their own. I have heard it said several times that Castellucci has no concept of the dramatic; I think that goes too far in this case, for this is no ‘mere’ installation and a story certainly is told. But the alterity to his aesthetic imagination, to which audiences, perhaps particularly opera audiences, respond very differently, is undeniably present—to my mind, more fruitfully than in, say, his Munich Tannhäuser or even his Salzburg Salome. It may or may not be the story some want to be told – ultimately, I think it remains the same story, albeit from an angle unexpected until one becomes accustomed to its shift – but we certainly have narrative and development as well as setting. 

That setting is one of widespread estrangement from Nature: not, I think, in an especially environmentalist sense, though that need not be excluded, but more existential. In light of that, the conception of the nymph Daphne, according to a programme interview, as ‘a being who withdraws from all social relationships in search of intensive, I should say, (skin-)contact with Nature … a contemporary creature who breaks with her surroundings’, seems central; so is her spiritual, as opposed to political, need to do so. And so, even in the deep snow, it is there she wishes to be. Whilst others, not unreasonably layer their clothing, she sheds much of hers. It is for us a radical break with all we value, social, erotic, and so on—and therein captures the dramatic essence of the work more clearly than one might suspect. The unexpected slant makes clear what that essence and her character are not. 

When Apollo does eventually bring sun to this world it registers powerfully, within its frame. He, after all, is far from entirely at home with himself, having uncomfortably, even shamefully, adopted the methods of Dionysus to ensnare the nymph. But acting in accordance with Nature brings the three key figures, Daphne, Apollo, and Leukippos briefly together, to an extent that would otherwise have been impossible; initial estrangement arguably assists that. I honestly cannot say I understood why the cover of the first edition of The Waste Land descended. It came across a bit too much as ‘referencing’ rather than drama, though I suppose quotation is inherent to the poem, and the act had an aesthetic as well as intellectual presence of its own. I am assuming, I think correctly, that there is greater significance to the invocation of Eliot than simply the scene of a winter waste land. But to return to the snow, one thing one can do with and in it is a favourite act of Castellucci’s: burial. (Another is the blood-like pouring and smearing of red paint over the dying Leukippos, tar-black reserved for Daphne.) Daphne’s transformation takes place both below – soon, we can no longer see her – and above, as the tree present throughout has a sort of apotheosis. There is something magical here, in the simplicity and wonder: ever tied or at least related to Strauss’s inspired orchestral and, eventually, vocalised concluding transformation (very much the composer’s own idea, rejecting Gregor’s idea of a choral finale).

 

Whilst we naturally – rightly – accord Daphne’s vocalise a key role here, it is actually quite short; for the most part this transformation is orchestral, and Strauss called it an ‘extended orchestral piece’. Here and elsewhere, Thomas Guggeis led the Staatskapelle Berlin with true distinction. From the opening Harmoniemusik throughout the score, the conductor traced an ever-transforming path, perhaps warmer than what we saw on stage, yet rarely heated and never remotely over-heated. This was a reading of subtle mastery, upset at most a couple of times by something intrusive from without—though that is arguably Strauss’s own responsibility. The Goethian metamorphosis that surely underpins Strauss’s method here as strongly and as generatively as in Metamorphosen was painted, indeed lived, as if this were a work far more frequently performed than it is; that is, conductor and orchestra showed deep knowledge and understanding, without loss to a proper sense of discovery and magic. For the orchestral players were at least equal participants in this achievement; I cannot imagine any orchestra, be it in Vienna, Dresden, or elsewhere, sounding more at home and proving a more rewarding guide. 

The cast likewise made an outstanding contribution. In the title role, Vera-Lotte Boecker’s silver glistened, gleamed and blended with her orchestral colleagues, though it could certainly grow into something fuller-voiced, thrillingly so, when called upon. Boecker entered enthusiastically, moreover, into the staging, grasping Castellucci’s at-times-somewhat abstract enigmas and personifying them, enabling one to believe. Like her fellow performers, she played the Straussian role of Music as well as singing or playing its lower-case cousin. To have had not one but two excellent Straussian tenor performances is quite something. Johan Krogius and David Butt Phillip both shone as Leukippos and Apollo respectively: the former offering a properly rounded portrayal, beautifully sung, Daphne’s likeable companion revealing tragic dignity in death; the latter’s rather different journey traced sympathetically and with due mystery. The deep voices of René Pape as Peneios and Anna Kissjudit as Gaea contributed much to the ensemble. Kissjudit may be described as a mezzo, but her chalumeau-like tones revealed, as in her Erda, the ability to sing a true contralto line too. Pape’s tone was similarly luxurious and similarly attentive to words. Shepherds, maids, and chorus were all excellent too. If Castellucci sometimes held the drama at arm’s length, though mirroring and responding it to throughout, that distance and conception of distance arguably enabled the riches of the evening’s orchestral and vocal performances to penetrate audience consciousness the more readily.

Berlin Festtage (5) - Götterdämmerung, 10 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Hagen – Mika Kares
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Gunther – Lauri Vasar
Gutrune – Mandy Fredrich
Waltraute – Violeta Urmana
Three Norns – Noa Beinart, Kristina Stanek, Anna Samuil
Woglinde – Evelin Novak
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Erda (silent) – Anna Kissjudit

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Alexey Polubpoyarinov (video)
Tatiana Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

‘Alles was ist, endet.’ Erda’s words from Das Rheingold apply both to the rule of the gods and to Wagner’s depiction of that rule, its decline, and its fall. The Ring does strange things to one’s sense of time, time in any case a strange thing to experience. By the time one reaches Götterdämmerung, let alone its end, one both feels one has been through a good deal, to put it mildly, and yet also that it has only just begun. Partly, of course, that is or can be the work’s message too. Wagner counselled Liszt to mark well his poem, containing the beginning and end of a world, not, as sometimes has been said, the world. Those ‘watchers’, men and women (on which Wagner is very clear) ‘moved to the very depth of their being’, who, at least according to his stage directions, should observe Brünnhilde’s final acts and who implicitly remain with us to create a new world, would otherwise have no role. Nor, on one level, would performing and staging the work. Here we were again, though: the end of another Ring, one which had challenged and taught us much, moving us too, even if not always living up dramaturgically to the moments of its highest promise. 

For, if much of Siegfried, especially its first two acts, had left me enthused and eager to find out what might happen next, Götterdämmerung sometimes suggested Dmitri Tcherniakov had lost his way, failing to follow up – or at least electing not to do so – on themes and threads which instead were left hanging. Wagner’s more uncomprehending critics might claim he did so too; we have no need to discuss them further here. The research centre in which the work – all of it, probably – takes place opened up questions of agency and control in which Tcherniakov seemed, at least in part, to have lost interest. If the Norns, whom we had seen throughout, filing away information, seemingly keeping matters in order, are now locked out of proceedings, what does that mean? I could speculate, perhaps fruitfully, yet the production largely seems to abdicate any responsibility it might have to tell, to explain, to suggest.

Hagen (Mika Kares), Staatsopernchor Berlin

The Tarnhelm’s failure again to work, Siegfried looking and dressing like Siegfried, not Gunther, on Brünnhilde’s mountain, could have many potential explanations and implications, yet where were they here? If the world has been disenchanted – fair enough, returning to Adorno and Horkheimer, or indeed many others – where, and I am sorry to bang on about this, does that leave the objects of Wagner’s work (musical as well as verbal and scenic)? It is not always clear to me that that problem has been adequately considered, though I think it could be in a revised production building on what has gone before. Where steps had been taken in Siegfried to suggest Wagner lay beyond any of the characters in setting up the experimental basis for the production, here if anything we went backwards—and it did not, Dallas- or Die tote Stadt-style, seem all to have been a dream.

Hagen, Gunther (Lauri Vasar), Gutrune (Mandy Fredrich), chorus

There are lovely and other telling touches. The return of Erda and ultimately the Wanderer (his cloth cap still somewhere between Chéreau’s Brechtian ‘watchers’ and Wagner’s own carefully curated portraiture) to pay tribute to the dead Siegfried is genuinely moving. Has this particular experiment concluded? In that respect we can, I think justly, draw our own conclusions, however inadequate. Siegfried’s earlier Don Draper-like sprawling on the sofa and a plethora of cigarettes tell their own story of toxic – literally so – masculinity. So too does the basketball court on which Siegfried meets his death. That Gutrune may be drugged too is interesting: perhaps an addict rather than a formal object of experimentation, but is that not in any case part of a broader societal experiment of death and disaster? (Her other treatment is decidedly unsympathetic to the point of misogyny: a pity.) 

And what to make of the ending? I am tempted to say very little. To the text of Wagner’s rejected ‘Schopenhauer ending’ – he rejected it for sure dramatic reason – Brünnhilde approaches Erda, ultimately rejecting a paper bird such as Siegfried had rejected from the Woodbird. She pulls down the curtain, after it has become stuck. Making her own way with a clichéd bag in hand? Doubtless, yet could we, should we not expect more? It did not strike me as a deliberate drama of the underwhelming, a world failing to end, as in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring, rather a need to do something, almost anything. But perhaps, even probably, I am failing to understand. Tcherniakov’s Parsifal and, more controversially, his Tristan were tauter, more thought through. Is the lack the message? We begin to pursue ourselves, or our thoughts, in circles.

 

More understandably, Thomas Guggeis’s musical interpretation seemed to have tired somewhat. It was still an excellent show, a fine achievement for one at this stage of his career, which would put many others to shame; yet, a few orchestral fluffs (near-inevitable) aside, there were a few more cases where, not unlike the staging, the conductor did not always seem sure where next to turn. There was tremendous playing from the Staatskapelle Berlin led, at its best, by a keen sense of where the score was heading, but there were hesitations too. That, I have little doubt, will change with greater experience. 

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried created the drama before him: tireless, cocksure, yet with a crucial degree of stunted development (Tcherniakov’s toy horse Grane another nice touch). He and Anja Kampe as Brünnhilde once again held the stage at least as well as anyone this century. Mika Kares added Hagen to Fasolt and Hunding, excelling once again in words, music, and gesture. Lauri Vasar (Gunther) and Mandy Fredrich (Gutrune) were not given the most promising hands in Tcherniakov’s conception, teetering on the edge of the merely silly, yet worked to gain our sympathy—and ultimately succeeded, a true sign of excellent artistry. The Norns and Rhinemaidens made fine contributions, though Violeta Urmana’s Waltraute did not make so consistently strong an impression as one might have expected.

Hagen, Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher)

It was, moreover, a joy to welcome back, however briefly, Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s thoughtful, detailed portrayal of Alberich. As so often, one’s thoughts returned to him, dead, alive, or somewhere in between. ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn?’ That near-liturgical question, so alluring to Boulez at work with Chéreau on the Centenary Ring, retains its irrational enticement. In lieu of a more conventional conclusion, that might do.

Berlin Festtage (4) - Siegfried, 8 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Mime – Stephan Rügamer
The Wanderer – Michael Volle
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Fafner – Peter Rose
Erda – Anna Kissjudit
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Woodbird – Victoria Randem

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Alexey Polubpoyarinov (video)

Tatiana Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)  

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Mime (Stephan Rügamer), Siegfried (Andreas Schager)

Experiments resume, continue—and, in several respects, come into sharper focus. Film footage of a miserable, traumatised child whose play has gone wrong accompanies the first Prelude to Siegfried. Siegfried, his emotional growth stunted at least in part deliberately by Mime, presents himself. He is still a child, really, as the toys in the corner of Mime’s house suggest. He does not know his parents, fear, and quite a few other things; the research centre, which is at least in part to say Wagner, will later put him through a series of experiments in order to teach him fear: a dubious project, one might say, as celebrated scientists – Darwin, Humboldt, Mendel, et al. – look down or gaze impassively. Nothing or everything to do with them? The choice may be yours. 

A Woodbird in lab coat, paper-bird experimental aid to hand, forms part of Siegfried’s education and further exploitation. Wotan sporadically watches; such, after all, is the Wanderer’s way, though he has been doing this, courtesy of one-way mirrors, since the first scene of Die Walküre. Brünnhilde and Siegfried disconcertingly laugh at their task, yet when we consider how emotionally – and physically – abused both of them have been, is their infantilism remotely surprising? Whatever future awaits them in Götterdämmerung, it is unlikely to be bright. Norns, typically unflustered, continue to do their business, whatever it may be. Maybe we shall find out next time.

Siegfried, Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

At least until the third act, Dmitri Tcherniakov and/or his cast’s commitment to detailed characterisation continues to impress. The third act, not entirely unlike the final scene of Die Walküre, flickers more intermittently with scenic inspiration; exploration-cum-confrontations such as those of Brünnhilde with Wotan and Siegfried respectively, seem not entirely to be Tcherniakov’s thing. By the same token, the reunion of Wotan and Alberich, like cantankerous foes in an old people’s home, is richly observed and increasingly sharply differentiated. There is more than a hint of Beckett, though that may come – it hardly matters – directly from Michael Volle and Jochen Schmeckenbecher, the former expanding on his unforgettable Bayreuth interactions with Johannes Martin Kränzle as Hans Sachs and Beckmesser. Both artists here stand at the very top of their game, words, music, and gesture combining to offer a masterclass in what Wagner demands theoretically in Opera and Drama and practically as both a man of the theatre and a supreme musical dramatist. 

Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher), The Wanderer (Michael Volle)

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried, by now quite a well-known quantity, remains an astonishing, tireless tour de force. It is easy to forget how, not so many years ago, we despaired of ever hearing someone capable of singing roles such as Siegfried and Tristan. A series of catastrophes at Covent Garden, for instance, all but derailed performances; Bayreuth seemed little better. Not only can Schager sing the role, he can act too—and did, entering with enthusiasm into Tcherniakov’s world, just as he had as Parsifal in the director’s production for this same house. Boundless energy is, of course, just the thing for the young Siegfried in particular; that and more are what he received. Anja Kampe’s Brünnhilde picked up where she left off last time and duly impressed. Coming cold to that final scene is a difficult thing to ask, yet one would never have known. I hope Tcherniakov will give them both more to attend to dramatically next time. 

Siegfried, The Woodbird (Victoria Randem)

The rest of the cast was excellent too. Stephan Rügamer’s Mime led us skilfully through the misery of what it is to be Mime, yet also the malice and misery that cannot only be attributed to external misfortune. Peter Rose made a stronger impression as Fafner than he perhaps had in Das Rheingold. Anna Kissjudit’s Erda, though not given much to do in terms of theatre – perhaps I am still hankering after Frank Castorf’s unforgettable portrayal of her (Al)exanderplatz farewell – was beautifully sung once more. Victoria Randem gave a lively, ideally projected performance of the Woodbird, highly convincing in the unusual requests made of her by this particular production. 

Perhaps the greatest star of all remains the astonishing Staatskapelle Berlin. The orchestra never put a foot wrong, responding with just as much skill and enthusiasm for Thomas Guggeis as they would have done for Daniel Barenboim. (I know I should stop mentioning him, but…) It leads and comments on the action as few can, and frankly cannot be bettered by any orchestra in this repertoire today. Guggeis’s work is similarly astonishing, when one considers it. For one so young, with so little rehearsal time, to take over a Ring and get through it in one piece would be no mean achievement. Yet he has done far more than that, bringing much that is different from either Barenboim or Christian Thielemann (earlier this season) without ever imposing himself upon the score or the action. The musical action flows as if it were the most natural thing in the world; maybe it is, but it does not just ‘happen’. And there are intriguing signs of how Guggeis’s interpretation may develop: a steely, wind-led harshness that at times recalls the Wagner (and Beethoven) of Karajan, especially apt in this ‘scherzo’ of the Ring, will balance heady, Romantic, yet always firmly directed outpourings of great emotional intelligence. Wagner, one might say, continues to provoke and experiment upon us all.

Berlin Festtage (2) - Die Walküre, 5 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegmund – Robert Watson
Sieglinde – Vida Miknevičiūté
Hunding – Mika Kares
Wotan – Michael Volle
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Fricka – Claudia Mahnke
Gerhilde – Clara Nadeshdin
Helmwige – Christiane Kohl
Waltraute – Michael Doron
Schwetleite – Alexandra Ionis
Ortlinde – Anett Frisch
Siegrune – Natalia Skrycka
Grimgerde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Rossweisse – Kristina Stanek

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Alexey Polubpoyarinov (video)

Tatiana Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)  

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

A prisoner has escaped in transit. Unpredictable and aggressive, as the video report informs us during the Act I Prelude, he is sought by police to return him to his institution. Someone knows what he is doing, though, and has maybe even had a hand in his escape: Wotan watching Hunding’s hut/apartment through a one-way window. If the glint and polish of the Research Institute’s wood panelling have previously suggested something with roots in the German Democratic Republic, yet a little too nouveau simply to be that, here we come a little closer to source (though it may still, of course, be a similarity rather than a straightforward portrayal). 

Take the U-Bahn further east from Unter den Linden, to Lichtenberg’s Magdalenenstrasse, and you will alight on a platform whose walls display twenty murals by Wolfgang Frankenstein and Hartmut Hornung, depicting the history of the German workers’ movement from 1848 to the founding of the GDR. Exit the station, and you will soon find your way to Normannenstraße 22, whose ‘Haus 1’ contains the offices of Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi. The wood panelling uncannily resembles the distinctive design of those offices, whose conference room contains the only artwork – as opposed to a documentary depiction – I can think of celebrating the construction of the Berlin Wall, another piece by Frankenstein, an emigrant from the West. This may or may not have been Tcherniakov’s intention in his own designs. I still suspect, partly on the basis of other productions, that the look of both sets and costumes may represent to him something more post-Soviet and avowedly psychiatric-therapeutic, not of course that the continuation of such activities post-1989 has been unknown, whether in Russia, whose NKVD was the avowed inspiration for the Stasi, or elsewhere. Yet it surely has resonances here in Berlin, in a production concerned with scientific or pseudo-scientific experimental psychology, observation, and discipline. 

The way the gods pass in and out of an apparently human dwelling, or site for observation, has obvious parallels, whilst remaining true to exploration of what form the gods might take in the world of heroes and humans. Hunding, a police officer, doubtless thinks himself well provided for—and in many ways is. It comes, however, at a price, as does everything, and Wotan-Mielke’s price will ultimately be death. (Mielke admitted that extra-judicial execution was an ultimate tool at his disposal.) Police Valkyries, learning their trade from their father, certainly entertain doubts, Brünnhilde’s of course the longest-lasting, yet all but her fall in ultimately. What else could they do? Siegmund faces a similar fate, more brutal, at the hand of other Wotan underlings; he puts up a fight, yet diagnosed psychologically disturbed, the end is always in sight. All the while on another floor of the research centre, though only occasionally visible to us, the Norns continue their work of classification, of filing, of recording.

Wotan (Michael Volle) and Brünnhilde

There are oddities, or at least details for which I cannot account. There remains a problem with objects that do not appear even in substitute form: not necessarily their lack of appearance, though that may present a problem in itself, but at least a lack of clarity as to why they are absent. I can speculate as to why Wotan brings a hooded Sieglinde back with him, so that she witnesses what becomes of Brünnhilde. There is no escape, after all, and this may be part of her treatment; she is clearly, unsurprisingly, traumatised by it all. I am nevertheless not sure, ultimately, what it added. More puzzling was Wotan’s clearly seeing Brünnhilde, and she him, on storming in to the panelled Valkyrie lecture theatre, only for him to ask ‘Wo ist Brünnhild?’ It did not seem to be ironic and, if it were, the end of that irony remained obscure. 

Scenically, much of that act was somewhat on the uneventful side, although to be fair, it often is. There is, though, a discernible transformation to be tracked in Brünnhilde, culminating intriguingly in what seems to be a reversion to childhood as she uses her crayons to create her own fire on the chairs. And I could forgive a great deal for the awe-inspiring denouement, in which Wotan’s world recedes into the background, a chasm opening up between them, stage machinery revealed and distance attained. What that will signify for the drama to come remains to be seen, but it is full of promise as well as having provided a moment of aesthetic wonder in itself.

Siegmund (Robert Watson), Hunding (Mika Kares), Sieglinde (Vida Miknevičiūté)

Thomas Guggeis’s work with the Staatskapelle Berlin (and singers) continues to be excellent. The orchestra was largely kept on a tight leash, making the most of highly emotional outpourings (not entirely unlike Boulez in this opera). Yet listen more closely and it bubbled away throughout, as much a witch’s cauldron as Wagner’s Greek chorus. I was struck more than once by the dark malignity of much of the sound, both drawing out the best from this particular orchestra and commenting on and contributing to Wagner and Tcherniakov alike. This may not be Daniel Barenboim’s Ring; it remains his orchestra.

 

Michael Volle’s command of his role as Wotan proved exceptional throughout. In marriage of close attention to text (which, one still finds oneself continually having to point out, includes words and music) to utterly convincing external manifestation of character, he must have few if any equals today. His is certainly a modern Wotan, not only in keenness of response to strong direction, but also in strong rooting in Lied performance. The saga-like epiphanies of a Hans Hotter or even a John Tomlinson may not be for our age, which is not to say that equivalent interpretative depth is lacking; it certainly is not. But we think of Wotan differently, as we shall think of him differently in another decade or two. For now, Volle reigns pretty much supreme, a privilege to see and hear.

 

The Valkyries

A further revelation was Vida Miknevičiūté’s Sieglinde, an outstanding singing actress, in which the accent on singing and acting was equally powerful, both enhancing the other. Her farewell in the third act was so earth-shattering that it threatened to overshadow, yet did not, what was to come, whilst her stupefied vulnerability at the end of the previous act engendered feelings both of sympathy and of critical, almost Brechtian, distance. Robert Watson’s Siegmund was largely well sung and similarly sympathetic; one rooted for his attempt to escape, even as one knew it bound to fail. Mika Kares, Fasolt in Das Rheingold, offered us a similarly considered portrayal of Sergeant Hunding. Claudia Mahnke was able to bring her Fricka more strongly into the foreground than had been permitted (perhaps by the production) in the previous instalment. She led us through the twists and turns of her dialectical argument, devastatingly victorious over Wotan—without suggesting the strange understanding voiced by some recently that somehow Fricka is in the right. Hers is the language of an old world—and here there is no doubt that that old world needs transforming, which does not of course guarantee that transformation taking place.

Anja Kampe’s Brünnhilde will surely be key to the success or otherwise of that attempt. On this basis, we can conclude that she will give it her best shot, however high the stakes, and that her performance will enable considerable feeling of affinity. Her Valkyrie sisters offered a fine ensemble of soloists too. What next? More will be revealed; yet tragedy seems to be colouring and forming the musical as well as the scenic air.

Berlin Festtage (1) - Das Rheingold, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 April 2023

Wotan – Michael Volle
Donner – Lauri Vasar
Froh – Siyabonga Maqungo
Loge – Rolando Villazón
Fricka – Claudia Mahnke
Freia – Anett Fritsch
Erda – Anna Kissjudit
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Mime – Stephan Rügamer
Fasolt – Mika Kares
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woglinde – Evelin Novak
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Fitshinsky (lighting)
Alexey Poluboyarinov (video)
Tatina Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

‘Follow the science.’ So we have been exhorted throughout the pandemic (unfinished). Everyone has claimed to be ‘following the science’: singular, yet multiple. We have ‘followed the science’ before and shall doubtless do so again. Ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki—except one cannot. Development of new technologies is, apparently, both the doing of science and not. Few dare question our age’s ruling scientism or, to consider it more broadly, Adorno and Horkheimer’s rule of instrumental reason or dialectic of enlightenment. Nietzsche did; Wagner did. Hegel’s ontology likewise presented the necessity, usually ignored, to consider the natural as well as the human sciences dialectically. Certain Russian thinkers have followed him. With the arts and humanities under assault as perhaps never before, seeking futile accommodations through ‘big data’, the rule of the ‘digital’, and so on, scientism continues its crazed parade to victory, foretold, like so much else, in the Ring. The time is ripe, then, for a Ring from this standpoint. Will Dmitri Tcherniakov, a Russian director with a considerable record in Wagner, be the one to do so? This Rheingold suggests that it might; we shall see. 

Das Rheingold takes place in a world of scientific experimentation (shades, perhaps, of Hans Neuenfels’s Bayreuth Lohengrin) with, crucially, a governing corporate element. The safety curtain presents a plan of the ‘Forschungszentrum E.S.C.H.E.’, whose realm we shall soon survey for ourselves—guided, of course, by what we are permitted to see. Wotan’s original crime, from which we shall hear in the Götterdämmerung Norns’ narration, to hew his spear, inscribing on it runes of domination, from the World-ash Tree thus frames what we shall see and hear. Perhaps ‘Esche’ (ash) also nods to Escher; it is certainly a labyrinth from which no one appears able to escape. Such, at any rate, is the world of cruel experimental psychology in which lab-coated Rhinemaidens and observer-participants – scientific observers are rarely, if ever, only that, whatever their ideological claims – play with, prey upon, abuse Alberich, to see how he will react. Is that not precisely what the amoral children of Nature do to the unfortunate dwarf who seeks them in Wagner’s Rhine? Here, of course, it is clearer still, though Wagner shows those who care to listen, that there never was a golden age. Like other forms of power, indeed arguably underpinning them all, instrumental reason is rotten from the start. The ash tree may stand in the room revealed for the final scene, but we know it is dying already, however healthy it may still look. Trees are for forests, not research institutes. Or as William Blake put it, ‘Art is the Tree of Life … Science is the Tree of Death.’

 

When, pushed beyond measure – ‘enlightenment’ insists that all be measured – Alberich renounces whatever it is here that he renounces, smashing the machines to both the surprise and the experimental delight of those who have pushed him, he strikes a blow yet also joins ‘their’ ranks. Nibelheim offers an underground avenue for further ‘research’ of Alberich’s own. Though is there something illusory to it? That is where I struggled somewhat with Tcherniakov’s vision. A Ring without objects struggles to be a Ring at all. Or is this a deliberate, negative presentation of the gold: as nothing? It is unclear, as yet, but for me a cause for concern, amidst much of promise. One might well argue, of course, that the changes of shape and form effected by the Tarnhelm are illusions. If so, they are mightily powerful illusions or delusions, which on the face of it should affect others too. Again, we shall see. 

The gods, meanwhile, appear to rule over the institute, though it is not out of the question that someone or something may lie beyond them too. (That is often an issue with gods, with power more generally.) We follow them through scientific-business lectures, boardroom negotiations and decisions, brutal despatch of Alberich and his ‘case’ via his handlers, and the final conjuring tricks that delight all (or most) save, notably, a Wotan changed by Erda’s intervention. The ‘look’ is reminiscent of Tcherniakov’s Tristan: its wood both a nod to the old Eastern bloc and an expensive, post-Soviet step beyond it. Both ‘sides’, after all, had their scientism and their more general apparatuses of power. More united than divided them in retrospect, at least from Stalin onwards—which returns us to the need for a Leninist, Plekhanovite, or some other (Wagner, Nieztsche, Hegel…) reconsideration.

 

If all was not well (in a good sense) on stage, the Staatskapelle Berlin was in good hands with Thomas Guggeis. Das Rheingold is perhaps the most difficult of the four Ring dramas for a conductor truly to shine in, yet, bar one surprisingly awkward corner, Guggeis offered a fluent, dramatic reading, often brisk, yet occasionally flowering into something ‘beyond’ with metaphysical interpretative possibilities for those so inclined. There is no doubting his, nor the orchestra’s, command of the score. Keenness of ear revealed new balances, even new details, as any fine new performance will. It was perhaps above all a linear reading, with less emphasis on the harmonic than might have been the case with Daniel Barenboim, but that will always be a matter of balance; Guggeis, like Tcherniakov, had a story to tell, and told it well.

So too did Michael Volle as Wotan, whose performance here, both dominant and collegial, was second to none. Volle has clearly considered his role deeply, responding not only to its text but its possibilities. His shift towards a changed, even tortured god during the final scene was noteworthy—and will doubtless be picked up in the next instalment. If I missed some of the blackness of a more conventional Alberich, Jochen Schmeckenbecher presented a lively, sympathetic yet not too sympathetic portrayal, similarly alert to the needs of words and music. Every inch a kinsman yet, equally, every inch a distinct character, Stephan Rügamer proved a fine Mime. Mika Kares’s mournful, lovelorn Fasolt reminded us who the only truly sympathetic character here can be. Anna Kissjudit’s Erda made her intervention count, her deep mezzo, embodiment of primaeval wisdom, as close to a contralto as made no matter. Rolando Villazón’s Loge will doubtless have proved more controversial. Approaching vocal lines as if from a bel canto melodic tradition, without being bound by it, he sometimes sounded strained, yet gave Wagner’s words their due and proved a fine singing actor into the bargain. The ensemble, including a number of non-singing roles, interacted well throughout. Where will following this art and science lead? We shall see—and hear.

Berlin Festtage (5) – Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Don Giovanni, 17 April 2022

Don Giovanni – Michael Volle
Donna Anna – Slávka Zámečníková
Don Ottavio – Bogdan Volkov
Commendatore – Peter Rose
Donna Elvira – Elsa Dreisig
Leporello – Riccardo Fassi
Masetto – David Oštrek
Zerlina – Serena Sáenz

Vincent Huguet (director)
Aurélie Maestre (set designs)
Clémence Pernoud (costumes)
Irene Selka (lighting)
Robert Pflanz (video)
Louis Geisler (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin
Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Don Giovanni (Michael Volle), Commendatore (Peter Rose), Leporello (Riccardo Fassi)
Images: Matthias Baus

Don Giovanni was the first opera Daniel Barenboim conducted: at the 1973 Edinburgh Festival. Nearly fifty years on, this new production was eagerly awaited, if more for Barenboim than for director Vincent Huguet, whose previous contributions towards this Berlin Da Ponte ‘trilogy’ (see here and here) have generally been considered disappointing at best. Alas, Barenboim, whose incendiary conducting of Peter Mussbach’s production here on Unter den Linden in 2007 remains one of my Mozart operatic highlights, had to withdraw, replaced by Staatskapellmeister Thomas Guggeis. 

Not that Guggeis fared poorly, far from it. In such circumstances, it is difficult to know quite how much is Conductor B and how much is Conductor B leading what is essentially Conductor A’s conception. Guggeis had been involved with rehearsals, and was in any case due to conduct a later performance. There was certainly no question of ‘period’ faddism. Possible flashpoints went unscathed, the Overture’s opening and the Stone Guest scene itself taken at a well-chosen tempo that enhanced rather than detracted from the depth and grandeur of Mozart’s abidingly theological conception. Guggeis always drew something approaching the best from the Staatskapelle Berlin, and generally ensured fire, drama, and where appropriate depth and heft. The all-too-familiar conflation of Prague and Vienna versions was used, but that was not his fault. Damage wrought to the second act was minimised by continuing flow. If, ultimately, there was not that Furtwänglerian Fernhören one would have expected with Barenboim, who is to say what we should have heard in something entirely of Guggeis’s conception. Here is a conductor who always impresses; this was no exception. 

As for Huguet’s staging, it made some creditable efforts to connect with what we had seen before, but alternating as they did between vague and specific, without much in the way of rhyme or reason, it was difficult to know what to make of them. It seemed to be set in the present, the baritonal-heroic baton passed slightly awkwardly from Guglielmo to the Count to Don Giovanni. Leporello likewise seemed to be picking up from Figaro and Donna Elvira from the Countess. Whether they were intended to be the same people a generation on, or simply to be read with reference to what had gone before was never clear. On the one hand, there were clear references; on the other, much seemed not to make sense at all when one followed them through. Giovanni was a photographer, or was credited as such, though it seemed to be Leporello who took the photographs—of his master’s conquests, of course. Displayed on a tablet, projected onto a screen for the Catalogue Aria, the similarity of their subjects, without exception young, slim, and conventionally good-looking (see also Così) was markedly at odds with the variety of which Leporello sang. Whether this were a deliberate mismatch or mere carelessness was unclear; to be honest, it become difficult to care very much.

 

Why Elvira briefly became a politician/dignitary, handing Giovanni a prize for his retrospective during the first-act finale, I have no idea; at any rate, she took her wig off—or did she put it back on?—and that line of transformation abruptly closed. I wondered whether there was also a hint at Don Ottavio and Donna Anna reincarnating Ferrando and Dorabella, but perhaps not. A strange gap at the end of the first scene, entirely halting the action for a less-than-necessary scene change, did not do wonders for continuity; perhaps it was a metaphor. Don Giovanni's brief appearance in a coffin, which first I thought was a bath (!) might have seemed suggestive, but it was simply part of an unconvinving move, for no evident reason, to a chapel of rest. And why he, supposedly dead (straightforwardly murdered here) stood in the wings to watch the scena ultima was never clear either. Perhaps he too was trying to work out whether there had been any meaning to what had just unfolded. (In the programme, Huguet says that the hero died, merely adding to the confusion.) There was little, if anything, in the way of social differentiation, let alone of sin and punishment (that despite the Commendatore suddenly, arbitrarily, becoming a courtroom judge). One might have wondered why Mozart and Da Ponte bothered. 

Singing was mostly admirable, though it cannot be said that the production afforded singers much in the way of inspiration. Michael Volle is ever a consummate professional; and so he was here, fully in command of the title role and its demands. Riccardo Fassi’s agile Leporello provided vocal complement and contrast, differently dark in hue. Slávka Zámečníková and Bogdan Volkov perhaps lacked a little in dramatic stage presence, but that was as much a matter of the production as anything else. Guggeis might have drawn out the seria distinction of their parts more strongly, but again that would not necessarily have made much sense, given what unfolded (or did not) onstage. They sang well, at any rate, as did Elsa Dresig in a welcome return as a volatile Donna Elvira. If Peter Rose were on occasion slightly woolly as the Commendatore, David Oštrek and Serena Sáenz offered a winningly straightforward peasant couple, physical and vocal selves as one. If an air of missed opportunity proved impossible to dispel, responsibility lay squarely with the production.

Boulez Ensemble/Guggeis - Bach, Hindemith, Haddad, and Stravinsky, 31 January 2020

Pierre Boulez Saal

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV 1046

Hindemith: Kammermusik no.1 for twelve solo instruments, op.24 no.1

Saed Haddad: Sombre, for thirteen musicians (world premiere)

Stravinsky: Concerto in E-flat major for chamber orchestra, ‘Dumbarton Oaks’

Boulez Ensemble

Thomas Guggeis

My final concert as a European citizen; hereafter, to quote the text of Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, I shall be ‘ein fremder im fremden Land’. All the more so, of course, when I return, to put it mildly, reluctantly to ein ganz fremdes Land, most likely never to escape it. The twin blows of defeat on 12 December and departure on 31 January have at least cured us of hope, perhaps the cruellest of tortures: coinciding, in typically savage irony, with Beethoven’s anniversary year. To have heard the Ninth Symphony next door, at the Staatsoper, on New Year’s Eve was an experience emotional enough; that, Fidelio, or anything else Beethovenian would probably have been too much. Instead, at the Pierre Boulez Saal, we heard music by the ever-rooted yet aesthetically cosmopolitan Bach and by three other composers who (have) found themselves in fremden Ländern. Hindemith and Stravinsky both spent periods of their lives in exile, while Jordanian-born composer Saed Haddad lives and works in Germany.

This was the first concert I had heard conducted by Thomas Guggeis. He impressed just as greatly as in his work in the opera house. Having the excellent Boulez Ensemble, drawn from members of the Staatskapelle Berlin and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, did no harm whatsoever, of course, but Guggeis’s preparation, understanding, and communication of that understanding proved equally important for another fine collaboration.

The First Brandenburg Concerto was a case in point, blessedly free of ‘period’ affectation, yet Bach as ensemble music – this is, after all, the Boulez Ensemble – rather than small- or, for that matter, large-scale orchestral music. The first movement offered somewhat odd balances at times, but I think that was in part owed to where I was seated, a little close to the horns. (Perhaps, at last, I had found a minor disadvantage to this performing space ‘in the round’.) At any rate, a bright, energetic, performance benefited from a sensible tempo that sought not to draw attention to itself but rather to permit Bach’s music to come to life – and succeeded. Dignified and well articulated, with a fine sense of chiaroscuro, the Adagio also benefited from Guggeis’s unobtrusive command of the longer line. Dialogue between Jiyoon Lee’s excellent violin piccolo solo and three similarly excellent oboes (Gregor Witt, Charlotte Schleiss, and Katharina Wichate) proved a fine centrepiece around which the immanent qualities of Bach’s score could happily shine through. There was similar yet different joy in counterpoint, harmony, and their combination in the third movement, likewise in the interplay between solo and ripieno writing, any balance problems now resolved. A courtly and characterful procession of dances brought the work to a close, reminding us that Bach’s idea of progression in a multi-movement work is often very different from ours. Sometimes that can cause problems for modern listeners or performers; here the question never arose. Musically directed virtuosity from oboes and horns (Samuel Seidenberg and Sebastian Posch) in ‘their’ Trio proved but one of many delights.

To hear one of Hindemith’s 1920s Kammermusik pieces immediately afterwards was instructive, perhaps above all because it suggested contrast rather than underlying affinity (at least to my ears). The first movement was frenetic and sardonic, knife-edge precision as expressive as it was impressive: quite the introduction. The second movement calmed down somewhat, if only comparatively. That calming permitted one to savour the estimable musical qualities, which are in truth at least as much harmonic as rhythmic and as anti-Bachian as they are Bachian. The opening clarinet-flute duet (Assaf Leibowitz and Silvia Careddu) sounded as if a slowed-down Twenties sequel to The Rite of Spring, the appearance of bassoon (Mor Biron) only rendering it more so. Here was an oasis of neoclassical calm; and yet it moved. It was tonal, yes, yet closer to something non-tonal in function than perhaps one might expect, at least at times. Such ambiguities were fruitfully explored under Guggeis’s wise direction. The unease of that movement seemed to be inherited by a finale of high tension, maintained and if anything increased until finally something had to give. Its dislocations disconcerted, indeed puzzled. Then all was over, siren and all.

Saed Haddad’s Sombre, commissioned by the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung, here received its world premiere. It seemed to me to speak throughout of an incisive grief, a grief that certainly spoke to me. Nimrod Ron’s opening tuba solo, dark yet not without implied hope, endured slings and arrows surrounding it, evolved into an ensemble danse macabre, subsiding, tuba handing over to bassoon, whose role as solo bass instrument would later be assumed by double bass, and so on. In between, harp, bass drum, and other percussion enlarged the reach of a dark ensemble that yet resisted something external, even deathly. At times, I was put in mind of the finale to Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, though that may say more about me than the work. A viola lament, joined in duet by arabesquing oboe; bells of hope, sweetest yet cruellest of tortures; patterns of material that seemed ready to repeat yet never quite did; a related sense of having to pick oneself up, only to fail: perhaps it was not fanciful to hear this music as tragic. It was certainly an accomplished work afforded accomplished performances; I should be keen to hear more.

Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto rounded off the concert in fine fashion. The busy automation of its first movement seemed still more distant from Bach than Hindemith’s response. That discrepancy is surely where the music’s interest lies – and so it proved in performance too. A little more overt aggression might occasionally have been welcome; however, I can see and hear the case for a more Apolline approach, as in the composer’s earlier Octet. Here, the Rake rather than the Rite beckoned, the controlling mastery of Stravinsky as watchmaker, divine or otherwise, apparent and polemically so at that. Likewise in the central Allegretto, whose spareness usefully highlighted the passing of ideas in mid-statement between different instruments. If one wanted to hear where Stravinsky’s later interest in Webern had come from, here was a strongly suggestive possibility. Aggression was, doubtless justly, more overt in a finale which at times seemed to approach the wartime anger of the Symphony in Three Movements, as well as its sonorous delights. There were no easy answers to be gleaned through the mechanical swing. Art is no mere refuge, however fremd our current Länder.