Recorded live last summer with the Lucerne Festival and Mahler
Chamber Orchestras and an immaculately tuned Arnold Schoenberg
Choir, this is a “modern” Fidelio in so far as it espouses
lightly pointed rhythms, transparent textures and attention to
detail – but it also captures the hallowed glow of Beethoven
tradition. Claudio Abbado misses the searing, spontaneous
freedom of Barenboim, but he also takes fewer liberties. It’s a
Fidelio of the concert hall, an impression underlined by Nina
Stemme’s slow, undramatic “Abscheulicher!”. Interest for
opera fans lies primarily in Jonas Kaufmann’s Florestan: his
aria, beginning on a thread of sound, is as much a meditation as
a cry from the depths. Christof Fischesser is the
excellent Rocco, Falk Struckmann a believably sinister Don
Pizarro.
