Enescu - Complete Works for Solo Piano and Symphony No. 4

George Enescu, Symphony No. 4 in E minor

George Enescu, Nuages d’Automne sur les Forêts

George Enescu, Chamber Symphony Op. 33

NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover

Conducted by Peter Ruzicka

CPO 777 966-2 (1 CD)

George Enescu, Complete Works for Piano Solo

Suite Op. 3 No. 1 “dans le style ancient (1897)

Prélude et Scherzo F sharp minor (1896)

Barcarolle B flat major (1897)

La Fileuse D major (1897)

Impromptu A flat major (1898)

Regrets G flat major (1898)

Impromptu C major (1900)

Prelude and Fugue C major (1900)

 Suite Op. 10 No. 2, Les Cloches Sonores (1903)

Nocturne (1907)

Pièces Impromptus Op. 18 (1913/16)

Sonantensatz  F sharp minor (1912)

Pièce sur le nom de Fauré

Sonata Op. 24 No. 1 F sharp minor (1924)

Sonata Op. 24 No. 3 D major (1935)

The Romanian composer and musician George Enescu had an extraordinary effect on his musical contemporaries. He was a student at the Paris Conservatoire with Ravel, who described him as “the most skilled among all of us with Gedalge” (who taught composition). Pablo Casals described him as “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart”, while Enescu’s student Yehudi Menuhin declared that “Enescu gave me the light that has guided my entire existence”. Nowadays he is a relatively neglected figure, probably best known for his two Romanian Raphsodies, which are perfectly agreeable but probably not what Ravel, Casals, and Menuhin were talking about.

This 3-CD set from Hänssler Classic of Raluca Stirbat playing Enescu’s complete music for solo piano and CPO’s release of the Symphony No. 4 and two other orchestral works will help open eyes to the scope and originality of Enescu’s compositions. It is telling that this is the first ever recording of the Symphony No. 4 (which, admittedly, Enescu left unfinished), and there are a number of other firsts among the solo piano works. Yet, almost all of the pieces reveal a composer with a distinctive voice and innovative approaches to harmony and structure, and some of them deserve a place in the standard twentieth century repertoire.  

The principal highlights from these discs are the Symphony No. 4 and the Chamber Symphony. The Symphony No. 4 receives its world première recording from Peter Ruzicka and the NDR Radiophilharmonie. It was sketched out in full by the composer, but only the first of the three movements was completely instrumented. Musicologist Pascal Bertiou completed the instrumentation in 1996. Enescu considered himself to be primarily a symphonist, and this symphony reveals him to as a very fine orchestral colorist with a distinctive harmonic voice and sense of structure. The slow movement is particularly striking, opening with a funeral march on the horn with hand drum accompaniment. The march slowly gives way to fragmented melodies in an exotic harmonic universe, leading to a seamless transition to the final movement – largely sunny in mood, but with flashbacks to the slow movement.

The Chamber Symphony occupies a similar sound world to the opening of the last movement of the Symphony No. 4. It was Enescu’s final work, composed when he was in very poor health. Particularly memorable is the sense of intimate dialog between distinct melodic lines, as well as the funeral march in the third movement. This is a very concentrated and focused work.

The three CDs of Enescu’s piano music are more or less chronologically ordered. Enescu was a noted child prodigy, completing his course of study at the Vienna Conservatory by the age of 14. The works on the first CD were almost all written before his 20^th birthday. None of the pieces are masterpieces, but most bear the distinctive stamp of the composer – rhythmically in the A flat major Impromptu (with the unusual time signature of 15/16) and harmonically in the Barcarolle. Enescu’s neo-classical leanings are also prominent. The Op. 3 Suite, written when Enescu was 16, has an impressive neo-Baroque fugue, and the 1903 Prelude and Fugue incorporates a distinctive blend of late Romantic harmonies and expressiveness.

As Enescu’s career progressed his Baroque leanings receded more into the background. Compare the Op. 10 Suite with its predecessor, for example – there are echoes of Debussy and Ravel in the Pavane, and the bell motif plays an important structural role (the piece is subtitled ‘Les Cloches Sonores’). Also on CD2 we have Nocturne, which offers a very good introduction to Enescu’s sound world, and Pièces Impromptus, composed in 1913-1916 but lost until 1957. Two are particularly striking – the haunting and ghostly Mazurk Mélancolique and the shimmering sounds of the Carillon Nocturne.

The principal offerings on CD3 are the two late sonatas. 24 No. 1, dating from 1924, and No. 3, written 11 years later. (Enescu never got beyond the preliminary sketches for No. 2.) The disc opens with the 1912 Sonatensatz, which was the first version of the Allegro from Sonata No. 1. This piece, lost until 1993, has a very late Romantic musical idiom, and sprawls somewhat. The later version in the sonata is much more focused and less generic. It has a pronounced folk element, although not as much as the second movement Presto Vivace, which has very strong and percussive rhythms, or the Andante molto, which sounds like a sort of folk nachtmusik. The Sonata No. 3 is, to my ear, the most completely satisfying of Enenscu’s works for piano. The outer movements combine late Romanticism with Enescu’s Romanian melodies and harmonies, framing a haunting slow movement.

Both of these issues do an invaluable service in bringing Enescu to the attention of a modern audience. Not everything here is gold, but there are certainly some gems. Raluca Stirbat, the distinguished Romanian pianist, is clearly wonderfully well attuned with Enescu’s musical voice. Likewise Peter Ruzicka and the NRD Radiophilharmonie. The sound and recording quality is uniformly high.

Mahler 6 and 7 from Harding and Chailly

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 6

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Conducted by Daniel Harding

BR Klassik CD 900132

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 7

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig

Conducted by Riccardo Chailly

Accentus Blu-Ray ACC10309

The liner notes for Chailly’s live recording from the Leipzig Gewandhaus of Mahler’s Seventh have this to say about the conductor’s approach –

Instead of viewing this music as personal confession – a mirror of autobiographical tragedies, inner turmoil, and anticipated catastrophes – Chailly returns the focus to the music’s purely compositional qualities: the innovative formal complexity, harmonic ambiguity, refined use of instrumental sound, and inexhaustible imagination of Mahler’s symphonic worlds.

It is hard to know what to make of this. Of course, music does have purely compositional qualities, and the list given is a fair description of the compositional qualities of Mahler’s symphonies in general, and the Seventh in particular. But compositional qualities are not an end in themselves. They typically serve an expressive purpose (and of course music can be expressive without being autobiographical – Mahler’s Sixth, the so-called Tragic, was written when he was rather unusually contented).

A little further on the author (Julia Spinola) says that Chailly takes the music at its word, which “rescues his Mahler interpretations from false pathos and sentimentality” and allows the music “to be experienced as a natural phenomenon, a world quite capable of speaking for itself without the assistance of well-meaning interpreters.” I am sorry to say that this is nonsense of the first order. Music can’t speak for itself. It has to be performed, and any performance that is more than getting the notes right is an interpretation. Chailly is no less of a “well-meaning interpreter” than anyone else.

So – on to the music! Chailly’s interpretation certainly favors lucidity and clarity over high drama and anguish. He is very successful at bringing out Mahler’s superb orchestration and at times the symphony sounds closer to a sinfonia concertante than to a symphony (thanks in part also to some fine and sensitive filming from the team led by Nyika Jancsó). One of Chailly’s great strengths is coordinating an intimate conversation between soloists across the orchestra. This comes across particularly clearly in the Andante Amoroso (the second Nachtmusik).

Chailly’s conducting is not cold, but he does avoid what some would describe as Mahlerian excess (and what others, of course, would describe as the essence of the composer!). Lovers of the kind of approach favored by Bernstein and Solti will be disappointed. Frankly, they may have a point. Take the first movement for example. The three marches have great forward momentum and impulsion, but they lack a certain bite and edge. The first Nachtmusik and the Scherzo are played very revealingly, but without the undertones of menace that I was expecting to hear. Chailly’s night is not “dark and full of terrors”, to borrow a phrase from Game of Thrones.  Still the Rondo-Finale ends with all the affirmation one could want!

Daniel Harding and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks share Chailly’s preference for lucidity and clarity, but their performance is not on balance quite as successful. The best moments in the first movement (to my ear) are in the other-worldly sections in the middle of the movement (the cowbell sections) – some of Mahler’s most contemplative music, played with great sensitivity. But what Harding doesn’t manage to convey is how this section, and the Alma theme, contrast so powerfully with the grim marches that drive the movement.

Harding positions the Andante before the Scherzo (as Mahler himself did for the first three times he conducted it). The movement is played with fluidity and gracefulness, but the Scherzo lacks the element of the grotesque that makes the contrast with the Andante so telling. One characteristic of Harding’s conducting is an apparent unwillingness to commit to strong accents (of the type so beloved of  traditional Mahler conductors), which makes the music sound rather smooth and emotionally understated. The drama comes back a bit with the opening bars of the finale. This movement contains much more emphatic contrast than its predecessors, but it is still missing that element of exaggeration that I think is so important to Mahler – a case in point is the rather flattened entry of the harps after the second hammer blow, which it is hard not to hear as a missed dramatic opportunity.

Both recordings have very fine sound – CD for the Harding recording and a choice between PCM stereo and DTS HD surround sound for the Chailly Blu-Ray (which is also very well-filmed). I think that almost every Mahlerian will want to buy the Chailly performance of the Seventh. I am not so convinced by Harding’s Sixth, however.

Britten String Quartets on DVD by the Belcea Quartet

Benjamin Britten, The Complete String Quartets

Belcea Quartet

Unitel Classica/Euroarts

DVD 2072768

The trend toward Blu-Ray and DVD issues has largely left both the string quartet and the post-Romantic twentieth century behind. Most issues are recorded concerts of big nineteenth century/early twentieth century symphonies and concertos, often simply recycled TV performances. This very nice disc of Benjamin Britten’s three string quartets goes some way towards redressing the balance. Hopefully it will encourage others to make more imaginative use of Blu-Ray and DVD.

The three Britten quartets (somehow it seems a little over the top to refer to a total of 80 minutes of music as the complete Britten string quartets!) were recorded in June 2014 in front of a tiny audience (a couple of dozen, or so) at the Studio Davout in Paris – no stage or proper seating, just chairs loosely arranged. The format works well, allowing the filmmaker, Frédéric Delesgues, to concentrate on the music. Delesgues does a very good job of bringing out the silent communication between the musicians, and focusing on a single instrument doesn’t seem quite as crudely selective as it often does in orchestral videos, where filming can seem to foreclose on the complexity of the musical texture.

Britten’s first two quartets were written a few years apart in the 1940’s, with a 30 year gap to the third in 1975, written a few months before his death. Although plainly not carrying the weight of the Bartok and Shostakovich cycles, they are very fine pieces, showcasing Britten’s formal preoccupations and dexterity, as well as his harmonic inventiveness and haunting melodic imagination.

The first quartet was composed on Long Island in July 1941. It is an elegant piece with considerable humor (in the scherzo, for example). But the emotional tone is set by the shimmering introduction at the very top of the instruments’ registers. The center of gravity of the quartet is in the Andante calmo third movement, which has strong echoes of the introduction. The finale opens with more playful humor, but ends with percussive drama, well communicated by the Belcea Quartet.

The second is probably the best-known of the three, written in 1945 to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s death. The three movement quartet is dominated by the final Chacony (Britten uses the old English spelling of ‘chaconne’), but the first two movements lay the musical ground most effectively. The chacony itself is made up of 21 variations on a Purcell-like theme. The variations are organized into four groups (focusing on harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, and formal permutations respectively), each separated by a cadenza played by the cello, viola, and first violin respectively. The musicians of the Belcea quartet rise to the challenge.

In the five-movement third quartet, written when his health was failing, Britten displays more of the percussive approach to rhythm that we see in the first quartet, particularly in the second (Ostinato) and fourth (Burlesque) movements. The first movement, curiously entitled ‘Duets’, does indeed open with a duet, but then morphs into “duets for four instruments”. The middle movement is a highly expressive, lightly accompanied solo for the first violin. The final Recitiative and Passacaglia is its match in expressiveness, while looking back formally to Purcell. This quartet deserves to be much better known.

The Belcea Quartet are very comfortable with Britten’s musical idiom, delivering performances of great insight and complete technical mastery. This is their second recording of the Britten Quartets. The first, for EMI in 2005, won the Midem Cannes award, and was well received. Hopefully these filmed performances will be too. The sound and video quality are good enough that I thought I was watching a Blu-Ray. Highly recommended.

Bruckner 5 at Myerson Hall, Dallas (Jaap van Zweden conducting the Dallas Symphony)

Bruckner, Symphony No. 5

Dallas Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jaap van Zweden

Myerson Symphony Hall, Dallas TX

October 16, 2015

 With his recently released recording of the First, Jaap van Zweden has completed his complete Bruckner cycle for Exton with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he was Chief Conductor before moving in 2012 to Dallas as Music Director of the DSO. I reviewed the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth in the cycle here, and was very impressed by van Sweden’s performance of the Eighth with the DSO at Myerson Hall in 2012. So I had high expectations coming into this concert, and was not disappointed.

Here are the timings for van Zweden’s taut and well-structured performance (using the 1951 Nowak edition of the 1878 version):

1 = 20’35”

2 = 17’05”

3 = 12’10”

4 = 22’20”

Van Zweden’s interpretation of Bruckner’s most cerebral symphony was very warm, but with no compromise on the formal focus. The acoustics at Myerson Hall seem particularly well-suited to Bruckner, and the DSO rose to the occasion with a wonderfully rich sound and very fine playing across the board. None of the soloists disappointed, and the principal flautist Demarre McGill was particularly impressive.

In the first movement van Zweden brought the contrasting themes into dialog very well, maintaining forward momentum throughout with a strong pulse and confident brass playing, particularly in the coda. The slow movement allowed the balanced sound of the DSO to emerge to good effect, with Van Zweden opting to make the movement sing rather than sound like a dirge. The scherzo was forceful but supple, maintaining a driving rhythm with dance steps never very far away. The opening of the finale was very precise, with the precision persisting into the first fugal passage, which van Zweden and the DSO managed to play with both clarity and warmth. There was more confident and focused playing from the brass, nicely balanced with the rest of the orchestra. The double fugue and closing minutes were extremely powerful.

 This was a terrific performance. Van Zweden and the DSO held the Dallas audience in rapt attention and received a well-deserved standing ovation.

Bruckner Symphonies 6 and 9: Simone Young with the Philharmoniker Hamburg

Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 5

Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 9

Philharmoniker Hamburg
Simone Young, conductor

Oehms Classics OC 689 (SACD)
Oehms Classics OC 693 (SACD)

Here are the last two recordings in Simone Young’s Bruckner cycle with the Philharmoniker Hamburg.  The signature theme of Young’s cycle is using original versions, rather than Bruckner’s later revisions. She did a fine job showcasing the original version of the Eighth – see here for my review. Since the Fifth and Ninth each really only has a single recognized performing version, there are no polemical battles to fight, and it is not surprising, given Young’s predilection for original versions that she eschews any of the completions of the Ninth. However, the flip side of the coin is that with both of these symphonies Young and the Philharmoniker Hamburg have to tackle a wide range of competitors head on and somehow find a way to stand out in a very crowded field. 

By way of comparison I listened to the Fifth and the Ninth in Stanislaw Skowaczewski’s well-regarded cycle with the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony. This was not a completely arbitrary choice. The Skrowaczewski cycle was reissued this year by Oehms Classics, who also brought us the Young cycle. And, like the Philharmonike Hamburg, the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony is not one of Germany’s most celebrated orchestras, so the comparison is not unfairly loading the bases against Young.

The comparison with Skrowaczewski revealed the principal weakness in these two performances – which is really one of articulation. By “articulation” I mean the ability to bring out the large-scale structure of the individual movements within these two highly complex symphonies. Young’s preference for expansive tempi lets her down, particularly in the opening movement of the Fifth – the Introduction sets things up nicely, but then the pace is too slow to allow the musical narrative to emerge as clearly as it does in Skrowaczewski’s performance, which has a much clearer sense of progression. In the opening movement of the Ninth, Young emphasizes the “flow” of the music, as opposed to bringing out the musical punctuation – again in contrast to Skrowaczewski, who offers a much clearer sense of the steps on a long musical journey.

Young is at her best in those sections where the musical structure is much more clearly imposed by the composer – in, for example, the final section of the opening movement of the Fifth, the fugal passages from the finale of the Fifth, and the two scherzos. But she is less successful when it comes to embedding these sections in a broader context (and, in the case of the two scherzos, in making the contrast with the trios as effective as it can be). She is also more at home in the lyrical passages from the slow movements, where she can coax a rich and satisfying sound from the Hamburg strings.

So, these are definitely not the high points of Young’s cycle. Being able to make a powerful case for lesser known and relatively infrequently recorded original versions doesn’t necessarily carry over to being competitive with versions where we have literally hundreds of recordings to choose from. On the plus side, however, the SACD sound is extremely good and both discs offer a choice between stereo and multichannel audio.  

F. Charles Adler Conducts Bruckner: The SPA and Unicorn Recordings

Mass No. 1 in D minor*
Overture in G minor
Symphony No. 1 in C minor
Symphony No. 3 in D minor
Symphony No. 6 in A major
Symphony No. 9 in D minor

Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by F. Charles Adler
(*) Sonja Draksler, alto
(*) Vienna Radio Chorus

Music and Arts CD 1283 (5 discs)

This 5 CD set from Music and Arts is a fascinating historical document – not least because F. Charles Adler was a very interesting figure. Born in London, but a teutophile at heart, Adler studied in Munich and worked with Gustav Mahler on the première of the Eighth Symphony. Director of the Düsseldorf Municipal Opera when the First World War broke out in 1914, he was interned as an enemy alien. After the war he remained in Germany until the rise of Hitler led him to emigrate to the U.S., where he settled near Saratoga Springs and established a music festival. In 1951, with businessman Norman Fox, he founded SPA records, originally devoted primarily to small-scale piano and instrumental works by contemporary composers and subsequently expanded to the orchestral repertoire, including Bruckner. Most of the SPA orchestral recordings were produced in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (operating under various pseudonyms after their contract with Philips in 1952). By 1955 SPA was broke and Adler started recording for two other labels, Unicorn and Composers Recordings Incorporated (CRI), before issuing a final recording for SPA – Bruckner’s D minor Mass in 1957, included here. Adler died two years later at the age of 70.

 Most of the recordings collected here by Music and Arts are from the SPA catalogue, although the recording of the First is from an LP issued by Unicorn and the Sixth is from a broadcast on the Austrian radio station ORF. The recordings have been prepared by Aaron Z. Snyder. Snyder worked from the original master tape for the First and from LP-to-digital transfers for the SPA LPs, for which the master tapes have all been lost. The sound quality is good, which will not surprise anyone familiar with Snyder’s work refurbishing historical recordings for Music and Arts (e.g. the set of Furtwängler’s Bruckner live performances which I reviewed here).

Another reason this is a fascinating historical document is the versions that Adler chose to perform. He typically chose the first published editions, even when revised critical editions were available. The First is recorded in the Doblinger edition of the Vienna version; the Third in the Rättig edition of the 1890; the Sixth in the 1899 Doblinger edition; and the Ninth in the 1903 Löwe edition. Most of these editions are treated with disdain nowadays, even with current trends towards eclecticism in performing versions. Although it is 40 years old, many of the judgments in Deryck Cooke’s article ‘The Bruckner Problem Simplified’ are widely held. He describes the editions chosen by Adler as “inauthentic” (the First), “unauthentic” (the Third), “unauthentic” (the Sixth), and “entirely unauthentic” (the Ninth). A quick search in John Berky’s Bruckner discography reveals that the weight of recording history is on Cooke’s side. On the First and Sixth Adler’s recordings stand in almost solitary splendor, edition-wise. He is in better company on the Third (joining Szell, Knappertsbusch, and Schuricht), but his predilection for the Löwe edition of the Ninth is shared only by Knappertsbusch. Still, the fact remains that this is how people performed and listened to Bruckner for a long time and so it is very instructive to have these performances available, particularly coming from the baton of a noted Bruckner pioneer.

Musically there is a lot to appreciate in these performances. The Third is an exciting performance, with a driving first movement and an intense adagio. The finale maintains the momentum of a very dynamic scherzo. It is easy to see why this version was so popular with mid-century conductors. There is some marginal orchestral playing, but the brass section is by and large secure. The First is also at the tempestuous end of the spectrum. Adler is definitely not from the “cathedral of sound” school of Bruckner interpretation! His opening movement is very expressive, using contrasting tempi to good effect, and the finale lives up to its galloping start.   

The Mass in D minor is an interesting piece, composed a couple of years before the First, but definitely looking ahead. The Credo anticipates elements of the mature Bruckner’s outer movements, while the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei foreshadow the later Adagios. The mysterious opening to the Kyrie also looks ahead to some of the familiar later openings. There is some shaky singing initially, but overall the performance strikes a nice balance between the choir, the orchestra, and the soloists (who include a fine bass, no details provided in the booklet, unfortunately).

The broadcast of the Sixth (one of only two recordings ever made of the Doblinger edition) has its moments. Despite some uneven playing, probably speaking to lack of rehearsal time, Adler’s expressive interpretation comes across, particularly in the Adagio. The finale, though, contains some awkward transitions and the final bars of the symphony show that Adler and the Vienna Symphony are not quite capable of pulling it all together in the apotheosis. This is the only performance where the sound becomes murky on occasion, with the wind affected more than the strings or brass.

It is only in the Ninth that the edition interferes with the music – most prominently in the Adagio where Löwe eliminates Bruckner’s climactic dissonance, but also in the scherzo where some sections of pizzicato are reassigned to flute and bassoon and a ghastly drum interpolation is introduced in the first transition to the Trio. Adler does a fine job in the opening movement, which moves majestically at a very broad pace (28’27”, a good six minutes longer than Knappertsbusch’s 1950 recordings), but he does not help matters by exaggerated slowing in the Trio. The third movement is less successful than the first, with the coda taken too quickly to my ear.

This set has been produced with great care at every level. The booklet is very informative about Adler as a person and conductor, and contains interesting commentary on each of the performances, as well as technical notes from Aaron Snyder. The sound is generally very good, particularly given the material with which Snyder had to work. I recommend this set wholeheartedly to any Brucknerian interested in the evolution of Bruckner performance and curious about how Bruckner’s symphonies sounded before the critical editions.  

Opus Arte's Blu-Ray of the 2014 Tannhauser from Bayreuth

Richard Wagner, Tannhauser

Hermann, Langrave of Thuringia, Kwangchul Youn

Tannhauser, Torsten Kerl

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Markus Eiche

Walther von der Vogelweider, Lothar Odinius

Biterolf, Thomas Jesatko

Heinrich der Schreiber, Stefan Heibach

Elisabeth, Camilla Nylund

Venus, Michelle Breedt

A young shepherd, Katja Stuber

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus

Conducted by Axel Kober

Chorus Master, Eberhard Friedrich

Directed by Sebastian Baumgarten

Stage designs by Joep van Leishout

Opus Arte Blu-Ray OA BD7171 D

The Baumgarten/van Lieshout production of Tannhauser opened at Bayreuth in July 2011, conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock. The production was not well received – according to Mark Ronan’s review in the Telegraph, the production team received vocal boos with not a single clap of applause. This Blu-Ray was recorded three years later, on 12 August 2014 with Axel Kober at the podium and a substantially different cast (only Camilla Nylund remains of the original principals). Judging by the applause at the end, the Bayreuth audience seems to have mellowed with time. My own sympathies lie somewhere between the hostile 2011 audience and the more generous 2014 audience. 

There are lots of good ideas in this production. Basing the staging on the Dutch performance sculptor Joep van Leishout’s installation ‘Technocrat’ is one of them. I may be an outlier here, but I found the inside of a factory both visually appealing and an interesting metaphor for the world that Tannhauser opposes to the Venusberg – and also for Tannhauser’s own experimentation. The Venusberg itself  is a cylindrical cage that arises out of the bowels of the stage at appropriate moments, bathed in red light. I also liked the way that Venus makes silent appearances outside the Venusberg, both in person (in the Act II contest, for example, where she has a seat in the audience) and metaphorically (in Elizabeth’s bright red dress and her occasional departures from maidenly decorum). There is definitely the making of a good production here.

There are also some truly awful ideas. Having Venus be heavily pregnant is one of them. Her fumbled couplings with Torsten Kerl, who is roly poly at best, looked ridiculous, and a powerful final scene was weakened by the eventual appearance of Venus’s baby. Nor is there any need for slapstick between Tannhauser and a conspicuously inebriated shepherd at the beginning of the Wartberg scene in Act I. In fairness, though, most contemporary Wagner productions have at least one absurdity in them.

The real problem with this production is that there is far too much going on. Van Leishout’s installation has multiple levels. This allows the characters to move around, breaking the visual monotony of some of the set pieces. But why have extras constantly moving around doing mysterious things with machinery? Further distraction comes from the projected son-et-lumière show at the rear of the stage. Not a bad idea, and the images were interesting. But in the context of everything else going on all it did was add to the confusion. Joep van Leishout and Sebastian Baumgarten really need to learn that less is often more. It’s not a coincidence, I think, that the most visually satisfying part of the performance was Act III, where the "busy-ness" levels seemed significantly lower. With less conceptual clutter the dramatic devices came across more effectively – e.g. Wolfram dancing with Venus and the obsessive cleaning of the “cleansed” pilgrims.

The vocal highlights of the performance are Markus Eiche’s Wolfram von Eschenbach and Camilla Nylund’s Elisabeth. Eiche combines delicacy and command. Wolfram comes across as much more complex and less “fussy” than he is often portrayed. Eiche is particularly fine in the opening of Act III. Elizabeth, who is so often portrayed as a rather smug puritan, is also revealed to be a much more multi-dimensional character who Like Tannhauser battles with the temptations of the Venusberg. Michelle Breedt’s Venus sings with verve and passion in the Venusberg, but doesn’t project as well as she might. Kwangchul Youn is a fine Landgrave, although the role does not demand much by way of acting.

The real disappointment was Torsten Kerl’s Tannhauser. As so often the tenor lead is the weak link in the chain. Kerl has certainly got the volume of a heldentenor. This serves him well in his entrance into the Wartburg in Act I, and again in the climactic moments in Act II when he has to project over the choir and full orchestra. But he falls sadly short wherever vocal characterization is called for. There some moments in Act III (particularly recounting his pilgrimage to Rome) when Kerl shows what he might be capable of, but he soon lapses back into belting it out at the top of his voice. His enthusiastic reception by the Bayreuth audience surprised me.

The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra is in fine voice in this performance. Axel Kober (music director of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein) made his Bayreuth debut in 2013. He is clearly at home with the score and paces the work extremely well, maintaining dramatic focus through the music even it appears to be total chaos on stage. The partnership between orchestra and choir is excellent, with both outbound and inbound pilgrims’ choruses working extremely effectively – at least from a musical point of view, it being a tribute to Chorus Master Eberhard Freidrich that the choir sings so well even when asked to do rather bizarre things on stage.

The sound quality is very good. I listened in LPCM stereo – a DTS multichannel option is also available. There is fine camera work (including some unusual overhead shots) and the Blu-Ray is well-provided with extras, including biographies of the principals. My only complaint is that Opus Arte (unforgiveably) play the credits over the opening of the overture – this ghastly habit has to stop!  It would be hard to recommend this as a go-to Tannhauser, but the concept of the production is interesting and controversial enough that Wagnerians not able to get to Bayreuth will want to take a look themselves.