This week's Friday Night Concert online was a throwback to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's performance at Edinburgh's Usher Hall last August, which saw them perform with internamtional soloists and the RCS Choir a concert version of Wagner's opera, 'Götterdämmerung' as part of The Edinburgh International Festival.
For the online concert, in between each section, the story is narrated by James Naughtie. For the online version this is a briliant idea, since the opera in its entirity was not being performed, it placed the music in context, filing in the narrative. Also, if, like me, you haven't ever had the courage to sit through the whole thing as a fully-staged performance, it helped enormously to get a grip of not just the story but the story in context with the composer and the Ring Cicle as a complete work.
The muisc is undoubtedly very dramatic and atmnospheric, and I can see it working much better in a theatrical context with set and costumes etc, but one still manages to evoke the scene - although not as clearly - from a concert performance. the thickly orchestrated slow moving repetitiveness of the music reminded me very much of the river Rhine itself... a large expanse of water, sturdy and seemingly solid, but whirling and dangerous under the surface. And just as a side note I don't ever recall seeing 6 harps in an orhestra before!
'Götterdämmerung' received its premiere performance in Bayreuth in 1876, and despite Wagner and his music being (perhaps wrongly) intermingled with Hitler and Nazi Germany, he still manages to stay popular in concert halls around the world. One thing I noticed about this particular concert though was that it was very much soprano-heavy. I obviously don't know if that is just because the excerpts chosen were mostly soprano ones or whether that is actually a feature of this oepra, but I much prefer male voices, and so found the listening quite difficult. Sopranos generally hurt my ears, and the higher they sing, the worse this feeling gets. I truly enjoyed Ain Anger's rendition of Hagen. An animate performance for concert standards and a beautifully mellow and nicely toned voice too. Burkhard Fritz as Siegfried was also extremely good and I enjoyed listening to him. However both were overpowered somewhat by Christine Goerke as Brunhilde and Karen Cargill as Waltraude. Both excellent singers with extremely powerful high voices and large lungs!
The concert was conducted by Sir Andrew Davis and the orchestra sounded magnificent under the soloists, as their close and lush harmonies created dramatic tension and made the lyrical passages flow Rhinelike on to the next section. As an introduction to the opera, I truly enjoyed it and has made me understand Wagner and his music much more. I still don't have the desire (or the stamina) to sit through the whole thing though!
Reviewer - Chris Benchley
on - 30/6/20
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