New Statesman, 29 May 2013
By Alexandra Coghlan
 
Wagner-Geburtstagskonzert, Dresden, 21. Mai 2013
 
Sated on excess, passion and Wagner
 
 
Alexandra Coghlan reviews the Dresden Festival's celebration on the eve of Wagner’s 200th birthday.
 
2013 might be a big year for classical anniversaries, but celebrations of Gesualdo, Britten and even Verdi have all been dwarfed by the biggest of them all: Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday. This year’s Proms feature no fewer than seven of his operas, Welsh National Opera are currently staging a new Lohengrin while the Royal Opera House’s Parsifal will follow in November. But if it’s authenticity you’re after then it would be hard to improve on a concert on the eve of Wagner’s birthday in the composer’s home town of Dresden, directed by Bayreuth’s unofficial musical director and Wagner-authority Christian Thielemann.

Rienzi, Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser all had their premiere in the gilded baroque splendour of Dresden’s Semperoper, which is among the most spectacular of the annual Dresden Festival’s venues – a secular foil and companion to the famous Frauenkirche, and another reminder of the city’s palimpsest-history of destruction and rebuilding. The Semperoper’s resident orchestra, the Staateskapelle Dresden, also has its historical ghosts. Nicknamed the “wonder-harp” by Wagner himself, some claim that the influence of the composer’s direction can still be felt in the ensemble’s sound today.

Whether that’s true or not, under their new conductor the Staatskapelle certainly have one of the most gilded of brass tones in Europe (only appropriate in so baroque a city), showcased beautifully here in the Overture to Rienzi. The roundness of the sound catches the opera house’s acoustic without undue force or edge, and timbrally they have a very similar quality to the concert’s soloist – superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann. In this intimate space both were able to give a dazzlingly subtle range of muted colours without any fear of the detail being missed.

Thielemann is a conductor of certainties, but what keeps him from inflexibility is the mutable, organic quality of these convictions. The result, in some of Wagner’s most familiar opera overtures, was curiously energised – music poised always on the edge of a change of heart, but driving passionately forwards regardless. Impulsion and propulsion are dominant characteristics, lending force to the storm that thrashes through Wagner’s overture to Der fliegende Holländer (a startling and vivid opener), conjuring Heine’s North Sea verses and Casper David Friedrich’s landscapes with every musical gust.

The Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin saw the strings at the fore, violins dissolving into a glowing pianissimo mist. Exquisite though their blend was however, Thielemann’s forces were at no
point less – or, crucially – more than lovely. There was an absence of urgency here, a void where the Romantic sturm should be, that was never quite filled until Kaufmann joined the ensemble. Both Kaufmann and Thielemann are masters of the long game, withholding until the absolute last moment before releasing to shattering effect. Lohengrin’s Gralserzählung grew from barely-breath to full textural heroics, with the orchestra matching their soloist’s every flicker and surge of growth. Pacing was swift, but the smooth transitions suppressed any sense of rush.

Kaufmann’s Wagner brings the directness of Schubert lieder to the opera house, and this gorgeous simplicity was most evident in “Inbrunst im Herzen” from Tannhäuser, another slow-build that allowed Kaufmann the space to develop the psychological detail that is so much a part of his operatic performances, and could easily have been lost in this concert of excerpts.

The concert’s sole deviation from Wagner, Hens Werner Henze’s Fraternite, was both contrast and continuation, tracing the line of textural influence from the earlier composer but stripping some of the richer textures back to an altogether more bracing, percussive orchestral core. This work from 1999 sees the composer as his most lyric, glancing frequently towards melody before turning determinedly away. It was a welcome opportunity to see the orchestra and their new conductor in a different mode, and one that bodes well for regular Dresden audiences.

Sated on excess and passion, it only took the arrival of the men and women of Dresden’s opera chorus, to propel us to truly Wagnerian levels of indulgence with the “Einzug der Gäste” from Tannhäuser by way of encore. Gathering round us in the stalls they embraced us into the sound, invited us into the celebrations that spilled out onto the Theaterplatz where hundreds more watched the concert on giant screens. Dresden and its annual music festival certainly know how to throw a birthday party. You might be waiting a while for Wagner’s next big anniversary but with Schumann, Weber, Schumann and Strauss all having significant associations with the city, it’s safe to say that the festivities are likely to continue. And with Dresden’s democratic, free-thinking spirit, you certainly don’t need to wait for an invitation.






















 
 
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