Saturday 14 March 2026
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
****
Stunning singing from soprano Sarah Wegener in Wagner and Strauss, and the UK premiere of a potential classic by Edmund Finnis
Saturday’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic under the baton of Nicholas Carter was billed as ‘Rhapsodies on love, death, and lust.’ Richard Wagner wrote the Prelude and Liebestod (Love-death) for his opera Tristan and Isolde while he was living in a cottage on the estate of Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck, who was 18 years his junior. Despite being married to his first wife, Minna, Wagner had a passionate relationship with Mathilde, who became his muse for the opera. Arnold Bax wrote his tone poem Tintagel after being inspired by his muse, the young British pianist Harriet Cohen, who was 12 years his junior. In 1917, the couple had spent six weeks at Tintagel, a village in Cornwall, where they had a passionate affair, even though he was still living with his wife, Elsita Luisa Sobrino. The couple later separated. In contrast, Richard Strauss’s muse was his wife Pauline de Ahna, to whom he was married for over fifty years until his death in 1949. He was inspired to write his Four Last Songs by his long relationship with her.
The concert began with Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde. The German-British soprano Sarah Wegener sang the Liebestod. There was a gentle lead in to the Tristan Chord, which marked a gradual move away from the conventional tonality in Western classical music. Conductor Nicholas Carter took the opening slowly, lingering almost reverentially over the music with a sense of mystery. His conducting was very calm, bringing out a lovely legato in the orchestra. The music gradually speeded up, then fell away again. It kept searching for a climax, gathering momentum; when it finally found the climax, with a vivid horn theme and dramatic timpani, it was ecstatic.
Wegener slowly, almost reverentially, processed onto the platform, calmly engaging the audience with confident eye contact. After a spellbindingly quiet theme on the lower strings, Wegener began, holding her hands out her hands as if in prayer. She sang with a rich, creamy soprano, with a lovely bloom at the top and a deeper, mezzo tone lower down. Her voice soared over the orchestra with a gorgeous legato. Her voice was ecstatic but beautifully controlled, sailing over the huge orchestral chords at the end; a superb performance.
The first half ended with the UK premiere of The Landscape Wakes by Edmund Finnis, which celebrates a completely different kind of love, a love of the natural world. Unlike Bax’s Tintagel, it doesn’t refer to a particular landscape. As the composer writes in his Note,
“The ‘landscape’ of the title is no specific place. It is every landscape. And the waking – the dawning, the renewal – is perpetual.“
The piece is immediately attractive and has the makings of an instant classic. At times, it’s reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’s pastoral music, with the occasional added edge of Britten, but Finnis has his own unique voice.
It began with fluttering, woodwind melodies twisting back on themselves, hopeful and sunny. An optimistic, faster section was a little folky, perhaps evoking the English countryside. The music rolled in endless motion: Finnis says, ‘while composing, I held in mind the mental image of the world spinning on its axis.’ Syncopated rising and falling themes led to a moment of darkness, with the textures becoming denser, until the music roused itself with a brass theme.
A contemplative violin theme gradually rose up, reaching a sunnier climax, then fell away again. This was the first time that the momentum dropped back, with a thoughtful section for lower strings. The music appeared again as if out of the mist, gradually coming into focus, gently discordant. There was a lovely series of key changes as a richly romantic theme appeared. The sense of momentum was restored, rising to an ecstatic high note in the violins. Clarity of texture was restored, and the orchestra was now quietly teeming with life. The swirling opening theme returned, and the Earth began to turn again. A stately brass chorale led to a slightly anguished string theme. The piece built to a climax, with a plainsong melody, scampering strings and a noble brass theme. There was golden sunlight at the end. The composer came on to acknowledge his applause. Hopefully, we will hear this radiant work again soon.
In his programme note for Tintagel, Bax wrote,
“This work is only in the broadest sense programme music. The composer’s intention is simply to offer a tonal impression of the castle-crowned cliff of (now sadly degenerate) Tintagel, and more especially of the long distances of the Atlantic as seen from the cliffs of Cornwall on a sunny but not windless summer day.”
The piece began with fluttering woodwind, casting back, in the context of this concert, to the opening of the Finnis, but also forward to the birds in the final song in Strauss’s Four Last Songs with which the concert ended. A majestic brass theme depicted the ruined castle. After a climax as the music built with a sense of inevitability, a long string melody described the view from the castle, the vast rolling ocean. Gently romantic violins, held back, opened up a new vista, with a folky theme on cello. Chromatic music led to a section which harked back to the Wagner in the first half, referencing Tristan’s ‘sickness’ music from the opera. This could have described the sea, or the human passions of Bax and his muse, Harriet Cohen, his ‘darling’ to whom he dedicated the score, ‘with love from Arnold.’ There was a huge climax as the waves crashed on the beach, with echoes of Debussy’s tone poems. The opening castle theme returned in a blaze of brass, with echoes of Holst’s The Planets in a two-note theme, superbly played. The glittering ending featured some excellent horn-playing, with the visceral thrill of a full orchestra.
Soprano Sarah Wegener returned to the stage for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, now wearing a sky-blue frock. Strauss wrote this suite of songs very late in life, but it was only after his death that his publisher, Ernst Roth at Boosey & Hawkes, provided the title and the order in which they are now performed. The same thing happened with Schubert’s collection Schwanengesang (Swansong), named after the composer’s death by his publisher, Tobias Haslinger.
Wegener showed her versatility in her approach to Strauss’s songs. In ‘Frühling’ (Spring), she was gently passionate, with lovely legato and beautiful control. She sang llike a leider singer rather than a Wagnerian soprano; she is more than capable of both styles. She sang ‘September’ with a warm tone and a wider, more operatic vibrato, embracing the words, with excellent control of dynamics. There was an evocative horn solo with subtle vibrato, reminding us that Strauss’s father was a horn player. In ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ (Going to Sleep), Wegener held back; her singing was relaxed and captivating, and she sang the final section with passionate energy. She began ‘Im Abendrot’ (At Sunset) singing in an intensely moving sotto voce. Her final utterance (and Strauss’s, too): ‘Ist dies etwa der Tod? (Is this, perhaps, Death?) sent a shiver down the spine; a gentle acceptance of the finality of death. The piece ended with a long orchestral postlude, quoting from Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), reminding us perhaps that Wagner himself called his Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde ‘Verklärung’ (Transfiguration). At the end, Wegener dropped her hands and smiled beatifically as if she had reached a moment of transfiguration herself.
Coda
Richard Strauss’s father was the principal horn player at the Bavarian State Opera for over 40 years. At the end of the concert, there was a celebration of the career of cellist Steven Callow, who has served the Philharmonic for nearly 40 years since 1988. Nicholas Carter gave him a bunch of flowers, and Wegener came over to give him a hug. We wish him well in the future.
Performers
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Nicholas Carter conductor
Sarah Wegener soprano
Richard Wagner Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Edmund Finnis The Landscape Wakes (UK premiere)
Arnold Bax Tintagel
Richard Strauss Four Last Songs
The concert was recorded for broadcast in Radio 3 In Concert on Monday 13 April at 7.30pm, and will be available via BBC Sounds for 30 days after that.
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