This recording, taken from performances at Glyndebourne in August, 2009, is unique in its scale. Playing in a small house, with what I suspect is a slightly reduced orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski leads more in the Böhm than Karajan or Furtwängler mode, which is to say he favors somewhat quick tempos and a nervous energy and “snap” at crucial moments. His Act 3 prelude is a bit too fast, but his Liebestod is spacious; similarly, he gives King Marke plenty of room in his monologue, allowing the man’s grief to win out over his anger.
This is a Tristan performance that emphasizes the sadness; rarely have I heard a Kurwenal with such a tear in his voice in the last act; rarely have I heard an Isolde sound so inward in her brief explanation to Marke near the close of Act 2, or from her entrance in Act 3 to the opera’s end. The LPO plays brilliantly, with mania leading up to the calm of the Love Duet and an abandon during Tristan’s third-act ravings that is terrifying. And while Jurowski never holds back the volume during the big moments, either the Glyndebourne acoustics or the engineers have made certain that each word and note of the singers is heard. During tender passages, the beautifully played strings act as cushioning; it’s a beautiful performance. Jurowski has no axe to grind and no idiosyncratic tendencies. And just for the record, the performance takes three minutes less than Pappano’s and five minutes more than Böhm’s.
The singing is superb. Torsten Kerl’s can be an uneven tenor, with a leathery quality. Here that rarely creeps in; he is tireless, observes dynamics, and actually seems to be reacting to his Isolde. His rantings in the last act are wild but always on the note, with the high notes ringing and true. His reaction to the sighting of the ship is almost child-like—a treat, a life-saving treat—and his first-act duet with Islode has a similar excitability. He doesn’t frighten, as does Vickers, but he’s stronger than Windgassen and more idiomatic than Domingo. And he has more energy than Heppner, if not the high quality of tone.
Anja Kempe is close to perfect: a gleaming, rock-solid sound with great warmth in the middle. She never turns shrill. She offers two cut-short B-naturals in the Narrative and Curse but is generous with the high Cs at Tristan’s Act 2 entrance. I suspect that her sound is not of a Nilsson/Varnay/Mödl size, but that doesn’t matter here. Lacking Nilsson’s icy anger or Mödl’s unbridled rage, she is a regretful Isolde from the start, very human and very young and impressionable.
Sarah Connolly’s Brangaene, like her mistress, is not huge-voiced. Best known as a Handel specialist, Connelly, with her concern, intelligence, and handsome tone, is an unusually sympathetic Brangaene—scared for her mistress in a familial way. Similarly, Andrzej Dobber seems more a peer than a manservant to Tristan as Kurwenal. The voice is solid if unyielding (no Fischer-Dieskau teensy subtleties here), and his fraternal love for and protection of Tristan are touching indeed. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Marke also plays for intimate grief rather than regal rage: his voice is a strong pillar of sound but he never pushes it.
The others in the cast—Trevor Scheunemann’s Melot, Peter Gijsbertsen’s Sailor, Andrew Kennedy’s Shepherd, and Richard Mosley-Adams’ Steersman—are thoroughly involved, as is the Glyndebourne Chorus, lively and responsive in the first act. I suspect that this set will not please the Goodall/Furtwängler more-epic-than-thou crowd, and it lacks the combination of mania and tenderness of Kleiber (Opera d’Oro and DG) or the sheer tension of Böhm, but it is a wonderful performance and should be heard.
