8 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Tuesday 4 February 2020
ARTS
Fromleft,ElenaPankratova,VladimirJurowskiandTorstenKerl— Simon Jay PriceRichard FairmanHow tempting it must be for conductors
to want to conquer the towering musical
summit of Wagner’sDer Ring des Nibe-
lungensimply because it is there. It is
refreshing to find a conductor who has
something original to say about it and
plots a course distinctively different
from most of his contemporaries.
Over four seasons, Wagner’sRingis
providing a grand soundtrack to the end
of Vladimir Jurowski’s long tenure as
principal conductor of the London Phil-
harmonic Orchestra. They have just
reached the third instalment,Siegfried.
Next year the climax will come with two
complete cycles in concert.
It was always likely thatSiegfried
would suit Jurowski. The best of the per-
formances of the first two operas came
when the music was light on its feet, so
Siegfried, with its humour and delight in
nature, took wing from Jurowski’s quick
speeds and alertness to detail. In the
closing scenes, as the music ascends to
the eternal heights of Brünnhilde’s rock,
it did feel as if Wagner was being cut
down to size, but everywhere else
Jurowski was pure gain. The sparring
between Siegfried and Mime was bril-liantly skittish. The forest murmurs
were fresh and vernal. The flickering of
Loge’s magic fire, played with excep-
tional clarity by the LPO, has never
sparkled so alluringly.
The cast was the best so far, but still
had its ups and downs. It was a shame so
little of the text could be heard, even
from Siegfried, the sole native German
speaker. Torsten Kerl’s voice is one size
short for the title role, but he is a good
musician and lasted the course, even
playing Siegfried’s pipe calls himself.
The best singers came at the start and
end. Adrian Thompson’s engagingly
characterful Mime dominated the firsthalf, while the final scene was clinched
by the vocal power of Elena Pankra-
tova’s Brünnhilde. Evgeny Nikitin was a
sturdy but rather faceless Wotan, Rob-
ert Hayward surely too noble-sounding
as Alberich (he also sings Wotan).
Brindley Sherratt boomed as Fafner,
Anna Larsson repeated her deep-toned
Erda, and Alina Adamski sang a sweet
Woodbird. This, though, was Jurowski
and the LPO’s night. They sound well on
course to reach their Wagnerian peak
for the complete cycles in Jurowski’s
farewell year.southbankcentre.co.ukJurowski on course for peak Wagner
OPERASiegfried
Royal Festival Hall, London
aaaaeLudovic Hunter-TilneyTindersticks — a band originally from
Nottingham but reborn in France fol-
lowing the equivalent of a midlife crisis
— appeared at Salle Pleyel in Paris on
the night that the UK left the European
Union. Lead singer Stuart Staples hardly
spoke, and when he did it was in
English, despite living in Limousin since- The only allusion to the date’s sig-
nificance came when he introduced the
title track of their new album,No Treas-
ure but Hope. “A sad song for Brexit day,”
Staples murmured.
Tindersticks are familiar with notions
of break-up and renewal. Named after a
box of matches found washed up on a
Greek beach, they released their first
album in 1993 when Britpop was
dawning. Their songs were handsomely
orchestrated but jagged, with black
depths in which the brooding shapes of
Lee Hazlewood and Nick Cave could be
discerned. The band were the midnight
arthouse film to the colourful main fea-
tures assembled by more successful
contemporaries such as Pulp and Blur.
Ten years later, Tindersticks had
ground to a halt. According to key-
boardist David Boulter, “We really got
stuck in this rut.” Rebirth followed Sta-
ples’s move to France and the reduction
of the group to a core trio of Staples,
Boulter and guitarist Neil Fraser.
After a five-year break, the second
version of the band resumed work with
2008’sThe Hungry Saw. Since then, they
have found new reserves of consistency
and adaptability, as shown by an
absorbing performance at Salle Pleyel.
The three founding members were
joined by current bandmates Earl Har-
vin on drums and Dan McKinna on bass.
Staples’s son Stanley also contributed on
guitar. Amid muted lighting, single
musicians were picked out by aspotlight during solo parts. It was a nice
touch, albeit erratically timed.
Using mallets and brushes, Harvin’s
drumming was subtle and detailed.
Boulter applied shades of organ, electric
piano and xylophone with painterly
adroitness. The overly loud riff that Fra-
ser played at the start of an otherwise
majestically realised “Show Me Every-
thing” stood out as a lapse only by virtue
of his impeccable control throughout
the rest of the concert.
Staples sang in a low croon, an intense
but unforced register. New song “The
Amputees” found him in a customary
role, longing for an absent loved one.
Themes of touch recurred in his lyrics,
like the brief moment of physical con-
tact between a son and a dying father in
“The Old Mans Gait”, a fleeting point of
contact in a life of “miscalculated steps”.
The music had a deep, rewarding
groove, a slow-burning kind of magnet-
ism. It brought to fruition the urge to
connect expressed by Staples’s verses.tindersticks.co.ukPOPTindersticks
Salle Pleyel, Paris
aaaaeWonderandcomplexity:‘DerSchmiedvonGent’.Below:NoluvuyisoVuvuMpofuasAstarte— Annemie AugustijnsMelrose particularly charismatic in the
title role. Noluvuyiso Vuvu Mpofu as
Astarte brings both an upper register
that combines silvery clarity with
voluptuous warmth and an unexpected
visual reference to the zombie body-
snatchers of Mati Diop’s recent roman-
tic filmAtlantics.
Eclectic? Well, yes. But then so is
Schreker’s score. This is only the work’s
fourth production since its 1981 redis-
covery, and for that alone, it is worth the
trip to Flanders.To March 1, operaballet.beShirley Apthorp
The Devil’s girlfriend, Astarte, saves the
blacksmith Smee from suicide. She
promises him seven years of good busi-
ness in return for his soul. One thing
leads to another and, in Ersan Montag’s
new production for the Flemish
National Opera, Smee finds himself run-
ning a waffle stand inside a museum
after hearing a rousing speech from
Congolese independence leader Patrice
Lumumba. The gates to heaven and
hell are side doors blocked off by red
velvet ropes.
Der Schmied von Gent(“The Black-
smith of Ghent”) was Franz Schreker’s
final opera, written in 1932, as the Aus-
trian Jewish composer’s world was col-
lapsing around him. Rightwing thugs
heckled at the premiere. The following
year, Schreker’s music was banned, and
he lost both his teaching posts. He died
of a stroke at the age of 55.
In the heady excess of Schreker’s
post-romantic output,Der Schmied von
Gentis a comparatively stringent work,
which is like comparing chocolate
mousse to cheesecake — it is still
insanely rich. The story, which the com-
poser saw as a simple fairytale, is a hal-
lucinogenic tangle of garish demons and
anvils, drinking songs, magical sacks
and feisty Flemish independence fight-
ers. To his usual harmonic language of
post-Wagnerian ravishment, Schreker
adds an awful lot of fugues and a few
droll moments.
This is Berlin-born bad-boy theatre
director Ersan Mondtag’s first opera,
and he has responded with unfettered
glee to the candy store that a major
house represents, at times losing him-
self in the wonder and complexity of his
own design. Yes, you can build some-
thing that is a village on the front and a
demon on the back and that revolves,
you can throw in references to Belgian
colonialism in the Congo and to 1920s
performance art, but at the end of the
day the audience might be forgiven for
wondering what on earth it is all meant
to be about. It is dazzling and bewilder-
ing in equal measure.
Conductor Alejo Pérez brings some
much-needed clarity to the musical
direction, finding moments of delicacy,
holding everything firmly together, and
stomping through the many loud pas-
sages with unflinching force.
A tight and well-balanced ensemble
sings confidently, with an athletic LeighFairytale dazzles and bewilders
OPERADer Schmied von Gent
Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Antwerp
aaaae
Apollinaire ScherrThe choreographer Alexei Rat-
mansky is always particular in his
choice of music, but until now that
hasn’t included contemporary
experimental composers. So for
him to use the German Peter
Ablinger’sVoices and Piano—a
“song cycle” consisting of 80-odd
people talking one after another —
is a first in several respects.
His new piece, the 30-minute,
10-personVoices,features eccen-
tric solos for five ballerinas, set
to the utterances (with piano
accompaniment) of singer Nina
Simone, Japanese film star Set-
suko Hara, the Norwegian peasant
woman who inspired a Grieg
lullaby, and so forth. A lock-step
cadre of men serve as a comic
changing of the guard. For a
coda, the choreographer builds
a gorgeous canvas of human
chaos: classicism and abstract
expressionism converging.
Ablinger’s piano part (ably per-
formed by Stephen Gosling) is
about as literal-minded as har-
mony gets, doggedly transcribing
the limited range of the speaking
voice into plinks and plonks. Rat-
mansky, though, does not follow
suit, instead throwing at his formi-
dable dancers steps so fearsome
that there are probably no French
terms for them.
Ratmansky is iconoclastic evenin the form his iconoclasm takes.
As a consequence, both ballet
revanchists and fans of the con-
temporary, sock-clad species of the
art have been known to dismiss
him, and even loyalists may pass a
first viewing somewhat perplexed
before resolving to come again.
I came again; the dissociation
between the music’s John Cageian
liberties and the choreography’s
classical lexicon (however
stretched) no longer distracted me
from noticing how brilliantly the
choreographer translated cadence
and pitch into gesture and posture.
To match Simone’s exclamatory
rhythms, Georgina Pazcoguin, in
her best role yet, punched the air
with her legs and brought reckless
turns to sudden perfect stops. Lau-
ren Lovette caught Hara’s breathy,
girlish reticence in blurred lines
and unpronounced pauses, at one
point puddling on the floor like a
Dying Swan made of feathers.
Unity Phelan rendered the
susurrations of the Persian poet
Fourough Farrokhzad in arcing
legs and curving back. To the even-
keeled voice of Public Radio jazz
DJ Bonnie Barnett, Sara Mearns
executed staccato, aggressively
awkward steps with a matter-of-
factness that heightened their
strangeness. And Megan Fairchild
acknowledged the Norwegian
peasant, whose voice fell and rose
precipitously, by evoking her own
folksy, be-tutued roles.
Which is true of the ballet itself
— the women we hear and the
dancers we see coalesce into a sin-
gle, stunning whole.Selected dates to May 2, nycb.orgDANCERatmansky’s Voices
Lincoln Center, New York
aaaaeSaraMearnsandNewYorkCityBalletdancersin‘Voices’— Erin Baiano