UK Edition
Review
Siegfried, EIF review: the Hallé are now playing with world-class finesse
Great Wagner conductors seem to come in two varieties: those like Georg Solti and Antonio Pappano who move horizontally across the score, propelling the drama onwards and marvelling at its dazzling surface; and those like Reginald Goodall and Bernard Haitink, who dig more patiently and vertically into the music, mining its riches in search of a deeper pulse.
As this marvellous concert performance of Siegfried demonstrated, Mark Elder is of the latter school. From the sinister comedy in the brassy snores with which the opera opens to the exultant grandeur of its conclusion, he is in no hurry to move on. He allows the music to unfold in Wagner time - a phenomenon that passes slowly by ordinary clocks, but has its own logic and rhythm. In drawing our close attention to the tapestry of themes and motifs, Elder makes us listen harder and hear more - this is what it means to experience Wagner.
What a superbly responsive instrument he has honed out of the Hallé Orchestra - and how astonishing it is to think that a body considered to be on the verge of extinction before his arrival could now be playing with such world-class finesse, equally confident in the boisterous rough-and-tumble of Mime and Siegfried’s banter as it was in painting the exquisitely lovely idyll of the murmuring forest.
The cast was of rare excellence. Singing the title-role for what I believe is the first time (and unlike his colleagues, hooked up to a music stand), Simon O’Neill tirelessly produced bright, clean, steady tone: colour and shade were lacking, but perhaps the sheer relentlessness of the sound was aptly expressive of the character’s fearlessly impetuous arrogance.
His two antagonists were Gerhard Siegel, a peerless Mime, both comically smarmy and repellently devious, and Iain Paterson, a Wanderer occasionally weak in his lower register but of noble mien and musical intelligence. The lesser assignments of Fafner, the Woodbird, Alberich and Erda were more than adequately fulfilled by Clive Bayley, Danae Kontora, Samuel Youn and Anna Larsson - while as icing on the cake came Christine Goerke, in lustrous voice as the radiantly awakened Brünnhilde.
The format of the evening couldn’t be described as semi-staged, but there was some costuming: Mime was in unsmart casual, dressed more for a backyard Barbie than a cavernous forge, while the Wanderer had unwisely gone mountain hiking in his Birkenstocks. Siegfried sported flip-flops and a sweaty t-shirt for the first act, but spruced up for his first date with Brünnhilde. All mildly amusing, but possibly not in the best taste.