WNO ORCHESTRA PLAY WAGNER AND STRAVINSKY | LIVE REVIEW

St David’s Hall, Cardiff

Fri 26 Apr

words BRIAN ROPER

★★★★☆

It was never going to be a quiet night at St David’s Hall. A double bill of Wagner’s prelude to Parsifal, his last opera, together with excerpts from Gotterdammerung (Siegfried’s funeral march and Brünnhilde’s immolation) was followed by Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring.

The Wagnerian themes of piety and self-sacrifice were expressed with both precision and warmth by an orchestra at the top of its game under a leader, Lothar Koenigs, who energised them and enthused us. After Parsifal, an already  large orchestra was augmented by the addition of a further six brass players.The latent power was restrained to the extent that the harp could be clearly heard in the finale of the first half, rather like the ticking of the clock in a Rolls-Royce at speed. This was a fitting tribute to one of the greatest composers in the 200th anniversary year of his birth.

It is also the 100th anniversary year of the first performance of The Rite Of Spring. The power of the orchestra was now to be released; the presence of an enormous bass drum boded well but the opening refrain was more redolent of Maria from West Side Story than the modernistic mania usually associated with Stravinsky.But this is a work that always surprises.

The driving incessant rhythms were cross-cut by discordant elements designed to disturb and disorientate. This was elemental, primordial and gripping. The performance finished with an audible hush; was it the orchestra or the audience? It was both! The conductor singled out individual players and sections of the orchestra for the audience to acknowledge, but the loudest response was for the unsung heroes of the tympani who had for 90 minutes, seized their rare centre-stage opportunity to great effect.

It was not obvious that the very different works of two giants of music would combine to produce a programme that worked. That it did so was a tribute to the musicianship on display.