This year’s Richard Strauss celebrations — the 150th anniversary of his birth — would have been the perfect opportunity to dust down some of the half-dozen splendid opera scores languishing on the library shelves. Instead, everybody’s playing safe and the LSO is no exception. Still, let’s not be ungrateful: more than an hour of the best music from Der Rosenkavalier, with three top soloists under that fine Straussian Mark Elder (and prefaced by a spry account of Mozart’s Prague Symphony), made for a deeply satisfying evening.
In the Presentation of the Rose from Act 2 the glorious mezzo of Sarah Connolly as Octavian, combined with Lucy Crowe’s soaring lyric soprano as Sophie, captured the thrill of the blossoming of young love. In the scenes from the beginning and end of Act 1, Connolly’s impetuous, passionate Octavian was complemented by the more occluded tone of Anne Schwanewilms as the Marschallin. The latter, relinquishing her younger lover and acutely aware of the frailty of life, can justifiably sound hesitant. A super-subtle reading by Schwanewilms or a sign that she’s not yet completely back to top form? The audience gave her the benefit of the doubt.
All three sopranos gave of their best in the rapturous trio of the Act 3 finale, where Elder’s flawlessly calibrated climax drew magnificent playing from the LSO.
