The Daily Telegraph - Features
An exhaustive completion of the Ring
Götterdämmerung
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jurowski ★★★★★
Wagner is renowned for taking his time, but even so the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Ring cycle has taken longer than most. Its staging of Siegfried (third of the Ring’s four instalments) in 2020 had been scheduled to be followed by full cycles in 2021, representing Vladimir Jurowski’s swansong as the LPO’s principal conductor before he left to become music director of the Bavarian State Opera. The pandemic intervened, and four years on the cycle has been completed with this Götterdämmerung — just in time for Jurowski, the LPO’s conductor emeritus, who begins a new production of Wagner’s epic on the Maximillianstrasse in October.
This performance was a reminder of how much Jurowski is missed in London. Showing charismatic command across the afternoon and evening – with a running time of over six hours including intervals, The Twilight of the Gods presents the destruction of Valhalla and the return of the gold to the Rhine – Jurowski had the work’s architecture in place while pursuing every detail with untiring energy.
Together with Jurowski, the performance belonged to the orchestra, and not only in such famous set pieces as Siegfried’s Funeral March. Sculpted strings made the opening breathtakingly beautiful, the brass had punch and coiling woodwind solos (clarinet especially) were memorable. The orchestra also supplied visual drama, from the six harps to the steerhorns in Act 2’s summoning of the vassals, where the London Philharmonic Choir and London Voices had blood-curdling power.
Only the Brünnhilde of Svetlana Sozdateleva was disappointing, lacking ideal amplitude to soar in the Immolation Scene. Burkhard Fritz supplied a soft, dark tenor as Siegfried, and Albert Dohmen granite tone as Hagen. Sinéad Campbell Wallace was a glamorous Gutrune and Günter
Papendell a strong Gunther. As Alberich, Robert Hayward’s delivery was suitably Wagnerian, and as Waltraute, Kai RüütelPajula was warm-toned in her entreaties. The trios of Norns (Claudia Huckle, Claire BarnettJones, Evelina Dobračeva) and Rhinemaidens (Alina Adamski, Alexandra Lowe, Angharad Lyddon) were superbly blended.
The Norns’ rope, which fatefully snaps, was one of only few props in PJ Harris’s staging, intelligently managed with the aid of discreet lighting and video. As for sets, none was needed, but the Festival Hall did depressingly good service. Once an artistic and musical Valhalla, built in the 1950s when governments believed in the public good of funding the arts, the hall’s deepening state of decline makes it something of a twilight zone.
lpo.org.uk