Susan Bickley reviews
Wagner: Das Rheingold
Sarah Tynan, Madeleine Shaw, Leah-Marian Jones, Samuel Youn, Iain Paterson, Susan Bickley et al; Hallé/Mark Elder (Hallé)
Bach: St Matthew Passion
Over two decades ago, Joshua Rifkin put theory into practice by recording Bach’s B minor Mass with just one singer to each part. Scholarly arguments over such economical forces have raged ever since, sometimes vitriolically, but McCreesh is the first to hazard them in the St Matthew Passion. The solo narrative is unaffected. Mark Padmore (Evangelist) describes events vividly, respecting Bach’s underlying recitative pulse but varying the dramatic pace freely, from perfunctory description of simple events to high drama – Peter’s weeping, Judas’s suicide.
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
With a cast of singers such as the one chosen by René Jacobs for his new recording of Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas it would be hard to imagine anything short of a triumph. Nor, in the event, was I disappointed, though opinions will surely differ over the solution offered by Jacobs for the end of Act II. It has long been thought that music for a concluding scene of the act has been lost.