Tchaikovsky: Pique Dame ***
Salzburg Festival, 10th August 2018
Tomsky taunts the obsessive gambler in Hermann with his Ballad of the Three Cards. The Countess recounts singing for the king in Versailles. But it is arguably the orchestra itself which is the key narrator in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. At the Salzburg Festival, Mariss Jansons and the Vienna Philharmonic made the most eloquent of storytellers, full of mahogany richness and neurotic emotion, yet in the Großes Festspielhaus they dominated the narrative, swamping voices in a Hans Neuenfels production which – apart from Reinhard von der Thannen’s outlandish costumes – is unmemorable.
Hanna Schwarz (Countess) and Brandon Jovanovich (Hermann)
© Monika Rittershaus
Read the full review on Bachtrack.