Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Stravinsky survey came to a close in a concert labelled Tragedy. It’s obvious why the tag applies to the first half’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex; less clear in the case of the radiantly austere Symphony of Psalms in the second. The two pieces have plenty of other links, however: both in Latin, both choral, both monumental (though in different ways), both marked by Stravinsky’s re-embrace of religion, and both written in 1926-30 as his neoclassicism evolved in new ways.
More problematically, the two masterpieces were explicitly linked by a tendentious semi-staging by Peter Sellars. This brought the banished, blinded and penitent Oedipus from the opera back on to the platform for the duration of the symphony, accompanied by the opera’s narrator and a dancer. It seemed an otiose conceit, but the point, presumably, was to present the works as a journey towards redemption and divine order.
There was much to admire, though, in Sellars’s deft direction of Oedipus Rex, with its pre-classical masks and sculptures by Elias Sime, and the Swedish choir Orphei Drängar urgent and dramatic in their vivid contributions. Joseph Kaiser was an exceptionally impressive Oedipus, tireless in the imaginative arioso that Stravinsky uses to capture the king’s vulnerability. Willard White was vocally and theatrically imposing in his three incarnations as Creon, Tiresias and the fateful messenger, while Joshua Stewart’s was strikingly good.
Only Katarina Dalayman failed to quite do herself justice as Jocasta. Emily Barber was a engaging narrator – and it was good to have a female one.
Salonen’s direction of both pieces was exemplary, thrilling when necessary, yet always clear and always disciplined. He is as fine a Stravinsky conductor as our era possesses, and his handling of the symphony, bringing out its structure as well as allowing the sound to float, was as good as you will ever hear.
