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New Statesman, 29 May 2013 |
By Alexandra Coghlan |
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Wagner-Geburtstagskonzert, Dresden, 21. Mai 2013 |
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Sated on excess, passion and Wagner
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Alexandra Coghlan reviews the Dresden Festival's celebration on the eve of Wagner’s 200th birthday. |
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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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