Tristan und Isolde review – Wagner in concert performance sees Pappano and the LSO at their finest

Barbican, London
Clay Hilley was a blistering Tristan and Sara Jakubiak – in her role debut – a persuasive Isolde with Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra detailed and minutely balanced

The London Symphony Orchestra’s regular concert performances of complete operas have become something of an institution. Janá?ek’s The Makropulos Affair and Strauss’s Salome had critics raving about high-definition orchestral textures and brutally streamlined drama. But few operas are more obviously made for the concert hall than Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The composer designated it a Handlung (act or plot), yet Tristan stands out even among his narration-heavy works for its sheer absence of onstage action. No other more closely encapsulates his notion that operas should be “deeds of music made visible”. Tristan’s ultimate drama is rooted in the orchestra.

Using the soft gestures with which you might stroke a cat (no baton here), Antonio Pappano teased the opening into being – unhurried, impossibly delicate, exquisitely in tune. Over the next almost-four hours of music, numerous details came to the fore that are more often muddied or lost when the orchestra is sunk beneath a staging. There were harsh twangs of double bass and an oboe trill that cut straight through the thick symphonic texture. There was a horn lick I’d never previously heard and a troubled, circling bassline allowed more prominence than usual. The strings were instantly responsive, their articulation immediately hard-edged or cashmere-soft, their sound effortfully excavated or as light as silk in the breeze. Drake Gritton’s cor anglais solos from the back of the balcony and the front of the stage were beautifully shaped, his tone beguiling.