[This from the current NZZ.  I'm dying to hear Haitink's new recording
of Tristan und Isolde, which was played in this recital nine days ago in
London.  Has anyone heard the recording yet?]

   Haitink/Wernicke "Tristan und Isolde" at Covent Garden

   The Lives of Red and Blue

   If you just could disappear in the music!  Totally be made one
   with it, completely inwowen in it, conquered by stunning harmonies,
   eroticised by the wonderful singing, then you are all traitors in
   Wagners "Tristan und Isolde".  Disappointed, fooled, betrayed, illoyal;
   those are the keywords of the text.  Only one thing is an exception
   from this formula; and that is the musick itself.  Just therefore
   the name of the undiscutable victor at Covent Garden, Londons most
   famous operahouse, which hasn't seen a "Tristan und Isolde" in 18
   years, Bernard Haitink, who is the musical chief of the place.
   Haitink is a quiet musician, who doesn't like show and spectaular
   gestures.  Right therefore it is the impression, that this "Tristan",
   on record, really not reveals its special charm.  The storming
   hailing of the conductor by the audience would well be completely
   ununderstandable for the listener to the recording.  Haitink unfolds
   the "Tristan" over four hours.  That means hot ignominy as well as
   extreme intensity.  Brutalities (that lies mainly in the first akt)
   or the morbidezzery fresch accords, tempo excess as well, outpointed
   soundmixes.  So, a mittig "Isolde", who doesn't tell any mystery or
   mythos, seen as a shape rooted in history in a always astonishing
   peculiarity, on this partiture fully nightly will-less ring.  So
   comes this "Tristan und Isolde" in shape; without psychologic brimborium
   without the implication of powerakt of animalic musicality.  Modern
   analytic, in foundation sceptic, far from all hagiographics.  Haitink
   places the heroic pair in a misantropical artistic world.  There is
   not that too great love agreed, which our shameful world (everywhere
   around Covert Garden sleeps those who fell through the social net in
   the doorways) no wiewpoint can nivellize and thereby flees in the
   for ever dead beauty of the soundcanvases.  Haitink examinates if
   the piece can stand up against sharpcoloured commercialsigns, against
   the dirty Presto of the metropolis, against the cruelty of racism
   (Londons papers are full of articles on a murdered student, who was
   killed because of his jewish origin).  But Haitink doesn't give these
   questions an answer pleading for the classical musick.  He just asks
   the questions and turn away from the listeners reaction.  Everybody
   else want something different.  At least the primus motor and regisseur
   Herbert Wernicke.  He proves in hours that Man and Woman doesn't fit
   together, that Tristan und Isolde hence cannot have each other.
   Therefore there stand two large containers, which both are missing
   one front, roof and wallpart, and which dance the ballet of giants,
   on the stage.  Tristan lives in a darkblue container, Isolde in a
   red one, which both leave clear images for damadged souls, and there
   are three oversized spears pointing into the containers - Abstract
   images without sailiorsromanticism.  The rest of the personeel,
   tedious groups of people around the protagonists, roam around the
   containers.  Cool and disciplined like Haitink, Peter Rose plays the
   man of power Marke.  No chickenhut!  Obviously Isolde has kept him
   on distance; no kiss, no nothing.  The lament of a never-won woman
   keeps within ranges.  Alan Titus acts loudly the Tristancompaigion
   Kurwenal; The raw unsympathetic side of the want-to-have/suiciders
   and Isolde-lovers is here critizised.  But there are also other women.
   While Kurwenal is lost in brainless 'Niebelungentreue', thinking of
   every mood of his master, Petra Lang show us a Brangaene who is rather
   emancipated - also from Isolde.  A portrait rounded off still full
   of edges.  Remains the protagonists:  Gabriele Schnaut and the from
   the third akt indisposed forgiven Jon Frederic West.  She sings
   nextdoors to him, clearly, by and then firm in the high register,
   seemingly without exhaustion.  Thereto she wears a shining white
   dress, which hardly is different from the original which Lili Lehmann
   wore in the 1884 Covent Garden production.  This anachronistic patch
   disturbs a whole evening along.  Isolde, like Tristan, therewith
   offers a hopeless, obsolete, Realotheatre with which she signals with
   upgiven gestures what moves in their souls, and what the music tell
   us much more precisely.  Here the regisseur Wernicke gcame on shame.
   Maybe he thought that a personleading, which stands against his
   abstract scenery and the outcircled conductor Haitink, has no chance
   to keep alive.  But so sings the loving pair full of compassion beside
   the grave on the szene.  A wonderful contrast.

   Andreas Breitenstein
   NZZ 20.10.2000

Mats Norrman
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