Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet is given a most engaging performance by the Robert-Schumann-Quartett (with Ana-Marija Markovina) on a new pair of discs. It's accompanied by the composer's less familiar three string quartets, using a newly-discovered manuscript. There are few differences from the traditional versions, apparently, but these CDs can be recommended anyway, and without reference to that particular selling-point.
Lastly, another historic DVD from the Unitel collection recently acquired by Deutsche Grammophon. This time its of the 1985 production at Bayreuth of Der Fliegende Hollander (usually called The Flying Dutchman in English, though "fugitive" would be a better term).
The sets are part-naturalistic and part-abstract, rooms and parts of ships sharing the stage with structures of tubular steel. Senta (Lisbeth Balslev) watches much of the action from a cage-like high platform, obsessively clutching a portrait of the Dutchman. The opera is played as one continuous whole, as Wagner came to think it should be. This is hard on audiences, but of course is no problem to the DVD-watcher.
The Afro-American bass Simon Estes brings great dynamism and nobility to the role of the Dutchman (never given a name in the libretto, clearly because he represents such elemental forces). Robert Schunk provides a substantial yet also lyric Eric, the well-meaning suitor Senta abandons for the mysterious demiurge, and Matti Salminen cuts a commanding figure as Daland, Senta's father.
Hollander has one extraordinary characteristic. The music of Daland, Eric and, until she comes under the Dutchman's musical influence, Senta is in the tuneful Italianate style Wagner inherited. But the music given to the Dutchman is in Wagner's revolutionary new style, so that what you witness by the end of the work is the destruction of the old by the new, the new Romanticism winning out over the old. It's a magnificent sub-text for any work of art. After it Wagner was all set to embark on his seven unique masterpieces.
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