The Mahler Players: ‘Tristan und Isolde’

Strathpeffer Pavilion - 04/12/22

The Mahler Players and their guest singers received a standing ovation from many members of the audience on Sunday at the end of their last epic concert of the year at the Strathpeffer Pavilion, which they have helped develop into a highly considered venue for the playing of serious music over the last few years. My partner, Liz – who was unfamiliar with the work, apart from the ‘Liebstod’, and a live Wagner newbie, but a huge opera fan – was first on her feet. I am almost professionally ashamed to admit, as your distanced and impartial reviewer, that I was on my feet to follow her only a few seconds later. What had compelled us and many others in a packed audience to such approbation was a performance of sinuous, subtle and emotional excellence and intelligence that was a delight to see and hear on a chill winter’s afternoon in the Highlands. Wagner is associated with large orchestras and full-on musical climaxes. “The challenge of taking on …(‘Tristan and Isolde’),” for the Mahler Players chamber-sized forces, according to arranger Matthew King in the program notes “was to find balanced new timbral solutions, using leaner combinations of instruments, so as to replicate the effect of the original in in such a way that even seasoned Wagnerians would find it difficult to spot the difference.” He adds, “Whether we have succeeded or not will become apparent in today’s performance”. Well in the opinion of this reviewer at least, players, singers, arrangers and conductor all succeeded quite magnificently. At 110 minutes without an interval this performance probably tested the outer limits of ‘bum numbability’ for German musical romanticism, but it did not feel that long, and the playing and singing were entrancing and engaging at a profound level from the get-go. The quality of the orchestral delivery was, as always with the Mahler Players, phenomenal. The timbre of the strings, particularly in the lower registers and its balance with the woodwind and brass was felt in the bones. This was a performance that bordered on acoustic perfection. All of the five guest singers were very good, and the closeness of the singers to the audience brought a real intimate and personal quality to their performances. In Wagner, there is musical leitmotif, but there is also philosophical, psychological and emotional leitmotif in the poetry of the libretto. Singers of opera (or music dramas as Wagner himself preferred to call them) need an Oscar-worthy emotional range and inhabiting of character, as well as strong singing voices, to make it work. Peter Wedd as Tristan, Lee Bisset as Isolde, Frederick Jones as Melot and game understudy Laura Margaret Smith as Brangäne all contributed positively to Wagner’s second act vision of Night as the time of emotional release and honesty, and Day as the time of duty and mundane existence in the pragmatic world. Sir John Tomlinson’s performance of the hurt and betrayed King Marke was absolutely stand out. He made gruff, spitting angry words and tones deeply musical and dramatic. Judging from this we should have more civil engineers singing opera. So, the stately march of challenge and progress goes on for the Mahler Players. I wonder what next year will bring. And one need not agree with Wagner’s Schopenhauerian philosophy that life is meaningless and irrational, and only moments of high emotional or artistic transcendence bring meaning, although that is undoubtedly partially true. But eternal love, or at least the illusion of it, triumphing over hierarchical ‘honour’ and feudal fealty is one of the staple themes in opera, and rightly so. This was a performance of ‘Tristan und Isolde’ that lifted the spirits in the depths of winter. Sumptuous and sublime. 

Cover photo: Sam Leakey