The quagmire of the gut strings

Kent Nagano and Concerto Köln /Dresdner Festspielorchester in the concert version of Siegfried in Cologne (****) [live]

Kent Nagano © Antoine Saito

If "historically informed" performances do not lead to a better balance between the orchestra and the soloists and between the instrument groups themselves, to interesting orchestral colors, to a greater intelligibility of the text, to sonorities with more nuances, to greater excitement in the orchestral dominant passages, then what is the point? Authentic musical practice with period instruments may have yielded new models of interpretation for early music, but as far as I am concerned, the results are rather disappointing for lyrical music of the nineteenth century. So far, only Thomas Hengelbrock with the Balthasar Neumann Orchestra has left a lasting impression on me in Cavalleria Rusticana. On that occasion, the Sicilian sun did not hide between the staves. This “historically informed” Siegfried is again problematic in many respects. The audience present thought it was great, but unlike Die Walküre, the Cologne Philharmonic was not sold out.