Rattle’s Tristan goes to Aix
mainIn his 1988 breakthrough novel, The Swimming-Pool Library, Alan Hollinghurst writes a scene where he is watchng Simon Rattle conduct Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden.
This summer, Rattle’s Tristan will headline the Aix-en-Provence Festival, just announced.
Stuart Skelton and Nina Stemme are the protagonists. Simon Stone directs. The LSO are in the pit, with an Estonian chorus.
Covid permitting.
This was announced in November:
https://slippedisc.com/2020/11/aix-roars-back-with-rattles-tristan/
If we are lucky in the UK it may be finally be possible to have a concert with some sort of audience by summer so maybe the LSO will consider a concert performance in London before or after Aix…
Or EVEN take it to a (whisper it) PROVINCIAL venue!! (Heaven forfend!)
Terribly sorry if my temerity in suggesting a PROVINCIAL venue has made a couple of London-centric fans have an attack of the vapours!!
Where all the best concert venues are!
Where? London? Arnolphe you have to be kidding. There is nothing in London to compare acoustically (on a Tristan scale) with (in no particular order of merit) Nottingham Royal Hall, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, or even possibly the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow. And (at a push) there is the Usher Hall in Edinburgh.
Indeed but it would be good if they made it a priority to play in London rather than Aix or elsewhere!
I repeat Santipab, WHY London, and not one of the other halls I mentioned since they are all superior acoustically to anything (of a suitable scale) that London can offer?
Because their home is London and they haven’t played for an audience there or anywhere else for almost a year.
“Alan Hollinghurst writes a scene where he is watchng Simon Rattle conduct Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden.”
No – you’ve muddled up two things. There’s a reference to the (completely fictitious) Rattle Tristan LP set; the Covent Garden performance is of Billy Budd.
No….surely not Oliver.
Norman never muddles up details before publising……errr……
Thanks and yes! The same Rattle-Stemme-Skelton trio which memorably performed Tristan at the Met almost five years ago. Ninna Stemme Isolde was electrifying. If it does happen, and one can travel to Aix, not-to-be-missed. And then worth staying over to attend the Covid-delayed world premiere of Saariaho’s ‘Innocence’. [btw, she was voted as greatest living composer… https://musicfinland.com/en/news/kaija-saariaho-voted-greatest-living-composer-by-bbc-music-magazine ]
I heard Simon conduct the Prelude and Liebestod back in 1973/4 when he was still a student at the RAM. Memory of it obviously a bit hazy after all these years, but he was quite astonishing in his command of both music and orchestra.
I had no idea she used to go out with Mandingo.