| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 13-Nov-2012 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Salonen and the Philharmonia deliver a razor-sharp Wozzeck at Disney Hall |
 Those closing bars of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, tottering away into nothingness, is one of the great nexus points in musical history. Drawing upon the coda of Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka, where the Russian’s ballet staggers in similar fashion to a stop, it was the signal moment in Berg’s opera that demonstrated, contrary to popular prejudice, the Austrian composer’s openness (as well as that of his Second Viennese School colleagues) to other composers and musics that ran counter to his own melos.Read full review... | |
| 12-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 41: Schoenberg's Gurrelieder |
| In a castle in mediaeval Denmark, King Waldemar and Tove sing rapturously of their love. But dark deeds are afoot: a Wood Dove tells us that Tove has been murdered by Waldemar's jealous queen, Waldemar berates God, he and his men are condemned to rise from their graves every night and ride in a wild hunt - all this to the accompaniment of a giant, brass-laden orchestra playing a lush, opulent symphonic score filled with repeated and transformed motifs.
Read full review... | |
| 21-Jun-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | Angela Denoke sings Berg and Wagner with the LSO and Gianandrea Noseda |
 This was potentially a very nice programme which frustratingly only rarely lived up to its promise.
First on the programme were the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, the iconic bookends of Wagner's most revolutionary work. The Prelude lacked the extraordinary tension and atmosphere it can have, though the climax was powerful throughout. Anyone who heard Angela Denoke in the recent run of Salome at the Royal Opera House will not be surprised to hear that her delivery of the Liebestod was severely affected by her sad and by now quite advanced vocal decline - which manifests principally as poor diction, wayward intonation and difficulty in sustaining a line. Her posture showed very uncomfortable signs of physical tension, and the severe jaw shake points to further vocal tensions that interfere with voice production. At least Isolde's scena lies much lower than does Salome's final scene, which meant that the wobble that plagues her high notes was kept better in check, but at this stage Denoke is not capable of doing full justice to Wagner's music.
Read full review... | |
| 31-May-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Wilde Headonism: Strauss’s Salome at the Royal Opera House |
 BARDA.jpg) Few live events could offer a more intense, visceral, grotesque experience than witnessing a performance of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome translated and adapted for the opera stage by Hermann Lachmann and set to music by Richard Strauss. Wilde’s decadentist retelling of the biblical tale takes no prisoners, rejoicing in hedonism, passion, corruption and depravity, pouring over with lust, guts and gore. Similarly, Strauss’s score is relentless in its fin-de-siècle, over-ripe Romanticism; its raw, wriggling lasciviousness; its constant, compulsive excessiveness.Read full review... | |
