Mezzo-soprano Rozanna Madylus and the ensemble Counterpoise perform Brunnhilde’s Dream
(Picture: Wigmore Hall Trust)No composer divides opinion as much as Richard Wagner. Was he socialist or antisemitic proto-fascist? Pro-women or misogynist? The list of polarities goes on: although he died 140 years ago, the debates won’t be settled any time soon.
This concert by chamber ensemble Counterpoise (piano, violin, trumpet and sax or clarinet) at the Wigmore Hall took an imaginative approach, not to resolving Wagnerian issues, but to musing on one aspect of them. Brünnhilde’s Dream is a monodrama devised by my colleague Barry Millington, co-director of Counterpoise. Brünnhilde is the lead Valkyrie in Wagner’s Ring Cycle: as punishment for supposedly disobeying her father Wotan, she is imprisoned atop a mountain, surrounded by fire from which only a Wagnerian hero can rescue her.
