LSO / alsop / Glennie, Barbican, London
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Your support makes all the difference.Ever wondered what happened to the nasty Nibelung dwarf, Alberich, at the close of Wagner's Ring? Having somehow missed out on performances of the American composer Christopher Rouse's audacious Der Gerettete Alberich ("Alberich Saved") in the decade since its premiere, I braced myself. So what did happen to Alberich? He found his way to the Barbican.
Der Gerettete Alberich is a percussion concerto for the amazing Evelyn Glennie, taking its cue from the final bars of Götterdämmerung. As the "redemption of love" motif comes to rest on its final, healing chord, Rouse holds the bass line inconclusively. We hear scratching and retching sounds; we see Glennie scraping on a guiro, an expressive South American instrument that can rarely have been so chillingly deployed.
She is an extraordinary sight, this slight, crouching, figure in silver pants and black hoodie. Red and blue stage lighting accentuates the theatricality of it all. The spiteful Alberich is reborn. And he will drum his way back to absolute power.
Thereafter Rouse whisks us back and forth through Wagner, recalling key leitmotifs, reappropriating and sometimes rescoring them, embedding them cunningly into his own orchestral narrative. And all the while Alberich drums on, a tormented soul possessed. No one does possessed quite like Glennie. The finale's explosion of rock drumming on her Union Flag-emblazoned kit confirmed what we always knew – that Alberich was a punk at heart.
Before Rouse came Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story in a somewhat pedestrian performance from the London Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop. What the piece needs is zippier tempi and more poetry. Thank heavens for the return of the retired trumpet ace Maurice Murphy.
Concluding the concert, Murphy's brass colleagues laid down some pretty intimidating girders of sound in Aaron Copland's Third Symphony. But the climactic Fanfare for the Common Man was typical of a performance where oppressive loudness proved no substitute for liberating openness. Rhythmically speaking, it was too cautious by half. We needed Glennie's spirit back.
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