opera

STRAUSS Elektra

Royal Opera House (April 2003)

I have heard no more beautiful account of this remarkable score in recent years, nor one in which every strand of the orchestral fabric is laid out with such pristine clarity, yet without self-conscious highlighting. This is, surely, how Strauss heard the music in his head and something like how the silkily beautiful Dresden orchestra played it…
The Sunday Times, April 03

Semyon Bychkov, whose interpretation of this stupendous score is extremely impressive, encompassing both its blood-soaked melodramatics, its Freudian neuroses and the more reflective and tender passages. He obtained particularly beautiful playing in the Recognition Scene and justified Strauss’s claim that if his dynamic markings are observed the words will always come through…
The Sunday Telegraph, April 03

Yet the success of this production lies in its absolute retention of control; from Gasteen’s terrifying, measured movements and superb singing of the Recognition Scene, to Semyon Bychkov’s chilly, cerebral conducting. Bychkov’s tempi are controlled rather than lurchingly grand guignol. But in the face of emotional meltdown on stage and (potentially) in the score, he establishes and maintains utter clarity; stretching and redefining texture and tone, and allowing the head-spinning, shifting dimensions of Strauss’s dazzling chord-spacing to sing. Orchestrally, this is one of the Royal Opera House’s finest hours…
The Independent on Sunday, April 03

Bychkov brings an altogether fresher eye to this kaleidoscopic score and is especially successful in revealing the many lyrical elements that look ahead to Rosenkavalier. It is a notoriously noisy piece, employing a hugh orchestra, but Bychkov never overwhelmed his singers, or beat his audience into submission with an unrelenting row as some have done…
The Mail on Sunday, April 03

There was much to admire in Bychkov’s command of the opera’s architecture and his attention to its furiously busy detail. He was also alert to the needs of the singers. He never bullied them, he never drowned them – like Rosenkavalier, this is a highly conversational opera, rich in verbal nuance, and the orchestra was rightly held back at important moments…
The Daily Telegraph, April 03

Musically it was another matter, a vastly detailed performance led by Semyon Bychkov that concentrated less on the score’s jagged expressionism than on its neurosis: the copycat scurrying and squirming of rats and maggots, whips and whinnyings, a horrific depiction of Klytemnestra’s waking nightmares with wormy bassline and hysterical shrieking violins…
The Times, April 03

Semyon Bychkov, in the pit, negotiated the delicate balance between capturing the score’s oppressive, darkly coloured textures and making audible its subtle details. In his hands there were many tender, moving passages as well as portentously brutal ones…
Evening Standard, April 03

Musically speaking, this work-which opens with a wild flurry of tonal dislocation – is an enormous challenge. The conductor, Semyon Bychkov, injects exactly the right febrile urgency, and extracts diamond-bright textures from Strauss’s kaleidoscopic score…
The Independent, April 03