Concerts of Wagner excerpts are often given the gory epithet “bleeding chunks”. Yet hacked from their respective music dramas, packaged and served up to the audience in convenient portions, it can feel like feasting on cold slices of processed meat. It takes a fine conductor who can breathe life into the butchered cuts. Fabio Luisi worked his magic with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai at the Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence, binding the various motifs in the closing scene of Götterdämmerung so deftly that you’d be convinced you were nearing the end of the 15-hour Ring Cycle rather than a two-hour concert.
Despite conducting the Metropolitan Opera’s Ring, Luisi is far more associated with Verdi than Wagner. He didn’t do any Wagner operas during his tenure as Generalmusikdirektor of Zurich Opera, although there was a double disc of preludes and overtures with its orchestra. The silver-haired Italian is a modest, no frills, no fuss conductor who gets on with the business in hand. There were no grandstanding gestures on display here, just a clear beat from his (batonless) hands and the occasional thrust of his arms to urge on his charges.
The rowdy crowd-pleasers were largely absent from Luisi’s programme – no Ride of the Valkyries or Lohengrin Act 3 prelude. What often impressed was the refined quality of the orchestral playing in Wagner’s quieter moments: the horns that launched the Tannhäuser overture sounded soft and rounded in the sympathetic concert shell of the Grand Théâtre; the sheen of the Rai strings glowed in the ethereal Act 1 Lohengrin prelude; the cellos in the Tristan und Isolde prelude were warm, without being overheated. The brass playing in the Good Friday Music from Parsifal (just a day late at this Easter festival!) was noble and reverent. Luisi has an exceptional ear for balance and blended his Torinese orchestra with great sensitivity, without it feeling micromanaged. He simply allowed the music to breathe and to sing.
There were moments when the orchestra’s Italianate temperament took the upper hand. Slightly blowsy trumpets threatened to derail the Lohengrin climax and there were some garbled woodwinds as the hedonistic Venusberg music tempts Tannhäuser, but most of the dramatic moments were tightly handled.
German soprano Gun-Brit Barkmin joined the orchestra for a pair of concluding scenes. There was a sense of wonderment to her Liebestod, although her clipped phrasing and lack of legato negated her riding the orchestra in Isolde’s long sweeping lines. She was much better suited to Brünnhilde’s flaming contribution to the end of Götterdämmerung; changing from voluminous white gown to black leather, she charged through the drama, egged on by baleful trombones. The heart of this particular bleeding chunk was red, raw and clearly still beating.
Mark’s press trip was funded by the Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence
