Götterdämmerung evaluate – Jurowski’s six-year completion of Wagner’s Ring cycle was effectively well worth the wait | Classical music

Wagner’s Ring cycle is famously lengthy. Even so, a cycle that has lasted greater than six years is a few sort of document. Again in 2018, Vladimir Jurowski was nonetheless the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal conductor when he launched into the tetralogy. Then Covid intervened, and Jurowski moved to new posts in Germany. In consequence, the cycle’s completion has needed to wait an additional three seasons, till now.

Jurowski’s Götterdämmerung was overwhelmingly value ready for. Live performance performances of Wagner inescapably place the orchestra much more on the centre of proceedings than ever. This was enhanced by a restrained and minimalist semi-staging by PJ Harris, atmospheric movies by Pierre Martin Oriol and, on this most foreboding a part of the Ring cycle, Mark Jonathan’s lighting, which started and ended within the pitch darkish. The outcome was a efficiency greater than normally centered on Jurowski and the LPO.

The standard was exhausting to magnify. Conducting from a rating of encyclopaedic measurement, Jurowski’s consideration to orchestral steadiness and sound scarcely faltered throughout almost 4 and a half hours of music. His consideration to color and dynamics was unstinting, the eye to accents and phrasing meticulous. The darkness of Wagner’s rating – orchestrated 20 years after the primary two Ring operas – was thrillingly realised. Was all of it often just a bit too completely sculpted and fantastically performed on the expense of the dramatic expertise? Maybe. But when ever you wished to expertise the connection between a conductor who is aware of exactly what he desires to realize and an orchestra keen to play their hearts out for him, right here it was, and throughout essentially the most huge of musical canvases.

Jurowski was additionally super-sensitive to his singers on this orchestra-heavy setting. The Rhinemaidens, vassals and Norns, amongst whom contralto Claudia Huckle’s lustrous First Norn stood out, all sang from the choral benches on the again, however have been by no means allowed to be overwhelmed – although this is able to have been exhausting within the case of the London Philharmonic Choir and London Voices within the Ring’s solitary and pulsating choral scene. The identical utilized to Robert Hayward’s Alberich, whose essential scene firstly of act two was among the many greatest realised phases of the night.

The principals have been variable. Albert Dohmen, in his day a Bayreuth Wotan, however now bringing all his craft, expertise and his nonetheless appreciable bass-baritonal heft to the pivotal function of Hagen, was the choose of the lads. Burkhard Fritz paced himself, generally frustratingly fastidiously, by means of the various challenges of Siegfried, however sang with actual lustre than in his last act narration and loss of life scene. Günter Papendell made what he may of the hapless King Gunther, considered one of Wagner’s least rewarding secondary roles.

Among the many ladies, Svetlana Sozdateleva was an uneven Brünnhilde. At moments, together with a lot of the immolation scene, the creamy richness of her soprano carried monumental conviction. At others, the burden and vary of voice, particularly on the prime, was generally lacking, and she or he tended to scoop at uncovered notes. Sinéad Campbell Wallace has a much bigger voice than many who sing Gunther’s sister Gutrune, however she caught the character’s vulnerability. As Waltraute, Kai Rüütel-Pajula excelled in one other of the opera’s essential confrontations, bringing simply the right combination of vocal luxuriousness and fervour.

May Jurowski and the LPO now put a complete Ring cycle collectively inside a a lot shorter span? In all probability too pricey. However we are able to hope. In the mean time, to catch Jurowski within the Ring, you should head for Munich, the place he begins a staged cycle in October.