Symphony No 4 - Beethoven
Die Walkure Act I - Wagner
The Beethoven and Wagner pairing offered by the National Symphony Orchestra at the NCH on Friday was the third instalment of the centrepiece of the current season's subscription series. And it was also, by a long distance, the most satisfying.
The first act of Die Walkure has just three characters in a readily grasp-able human situation. Siegmund, a social outcast, seeks refuge in the house of Hunding, who turns out to be an ally of the very clan from whom the unfortunate Siegmund is fleeing. Hunding's wife, it emerges, is none other than Sieglinde, Siegmund's long-lost twin sister.
And it's not just family feeling that causes Sieglinde to drug her husband. A sexual chemistry arises, leaving brother and sister passionately in each other's arms at the end of the act.
The opening of Die Walkure was as thoroughly successful in concert presentation as conductor Alexander Anissimov's earlier pickings from Das Rheingold were not. With the span of a full act to deal with, Anissimov at last recognisably asserted himself in the context of opera in the concert hall as the dramatically cogent musician who has made such a favourable impression in the opera house in Wexford and Dublin.
The three singers provided interesting contrasts. Soprano Elene Bernardy, true and clear and with an exciting overdrive, and tenor Robin Leggate, more sober and restrained, had affinities both vocal and musical that set them clearly apart from the world of bass Walter Fink.
The twins were not only lighter in tone but also far more concerned with accuracy of pitch and rhythm than the tonally voluminous Fink, whose rhetorical grasp of Wagnerian delivery yet remained both sure and spectacular enough to win him a special cheer at the end of the evening.
The music of Beethoven, alas, is not proving to be a natural working territory for Anissimov. Yet in the Fourth Symphony he was as invigorating as I've heard him in this repertoire.
He may not have the style or, so to speak, the accent of the music. But this performance at least had a degree of thrust and energy that has not always been a feature of his Beethoven.
