All In The Timing

Just back from a jolly evening spent with the SSO doing the business on Strauss and Wagner. Basically I went for the Four Last Songs and they were gorgeously played. I can't remember twenty-odd minutes of music ever passing so quickly, though inevitably time stopped towards the end of Im Abendrot. The young lady doing the singing was no slouch either - one Annalena Persson, from Sweden. She soared over the orchestra in the high bits, but it was the middle-range stuff that did it for me.

She was back for the end of the Wagner, doing the Liebstod from the end of Tristan. Must say, it was a bit of a relief to get to the end of what was entitled An Orchestral Passion, based on the opera. Not  that it wasn't severely lovely, as you might expect, but there wasn't a lot of variety in terms of mood - ecstasy followed by more ecstasy, if you see what I mean. I got a bit lost after the first twenty minutes, though there was a fabulous solo for English horn somewhere in the middle that brought me round, and the Liebstod seemed to shoot by even though time was suitably standing still again - at least for this listener.