I found this a very surprising
Dutchman, confounding my
expectations at several turns. For one thing, with Andris Nelsons at the
helm I had been expecting an interpretation so vigorous and fired-up that
you’d be able to smell the sea salt. In fact what struck me most of all in
his reading was its lyricism and poetry. Yes, the storm scenes are exciting
but what really took off was the gentleness of Senta’s ballad and the great
Act 2 duet between Senta and the Dutchman. Perhaps he had been tamed by the
luscious strings of the Concertgebouw, who sound sensational here. Every
semi-quaver is beautifully articulated and precisely enunciated, but there
is a long-breathed grandeur to the sound that positively glows in the
resonant acoustic. It makes you dream of how this band might sound if they
were in the opera pit more regularly. Nelsons has plenty to say about the
score, and he lingers on its very final chord very enticingly, but there
wasn’t much about his reading that made me catch fire, for all the beauty of
its sound. It’s capable but not revelatory.
Many of the singers surprised me too, but not always in a good way. I was
expecting Kwangchul Youn to sing the socks off everyone else on stage, but
in fact he comes across as somewhat unsteady at the start, and only settles
into the role gradually — and even then, far from triumphantly. Christopher
Ventris is a lyrical but unexciting Erik, whose remonstrations with Senta
aren’t interesting, for all that he comes alive in the dream scene of the
second act. Terje Stensvold, who I’ve come across previously only in
passing, doesn’t have the titanic voice that the role requires. In fact, his
great monologue in the first act doesn’t pass an awful lot of muster. For
all the excitement that Nelsons generates on the podium, the turbulence of
Wie oft in Meeres and the tenderness of
Dich frage ich are
beyond him. Jane Henschel sounds sadly spent as Mary.
Only Anja Kampe lived up to some of the high expectations I had of the
set. She sound electric as Senta, from the gamut of emotions in the ballad,
through to her fanatical devotion to the Dutchman’s cause. She also sings
with more beauty than anyone else in the set, even though she is no Anja
Silja in this role. Thanks primarily to her, the great duet of Act 2,
Wie aus der Ferne is the highlight of the set, moving from inward
reflection through to riveting excitement.
The other great assets of the set are the three choruses, who sound
fantastic. The women are magical in the second act when they join in Senta’s
ballad, and the men, in particular, have a rollicking time as they slice
through the sea shanties with tremendous vigour.
I won’t be coming back to this CD before other favourites, though:
Sinopoli’s now classic DG set is still the one for me, while
Klemperer,
Janowski and Sawallisch also present worthy
alternatives;
Minkowski, too, for novelty reasons. For those who are
interested in such things, by the way, Nelsons performs a hybrid of
versions: Act 1 has a concert ending, but Acts 2 and 3 are run together
without a break. The booklet includes biographies plus full texts and
translations.
Simon Thompson
