Performing the second act of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in isolation is a questionable exercise at best. It can be cruel on the listener, in whom the music stirs deep feelings that become frustrated when the emotional resolution of the last act is withheld. There is often also a sense of anticlimax: Marke's monologue can seem long and arid after the love duet, something we don't experience when we hear the work complete. Vladimir Jurowski's performance with the London Philharmonic - a try-out for Glyndebourne next summer - reminded us of both pitfalls.
Jurowski hasn't as yet quite got the full measure of the act's span. He's at his best where Wagner is most volatile: in the lurching, coital frenzy of the opening of the love duet, or the violent closing section in which Tristan turns on Melot. Elsewhere, he can hang fire a bit. O Sink Hernieder is faster than it need be, and Jurowski subsequently takes a while to generate the requisite sense of narcotic irrationality. Robert Dean Smith, his voice not quite as beautiful as it once was, was an easy-sounding Tristan opposite Anja Kampe's full-on, ecstatic Isolde. As Marke, László Polgár sang with an apology for a severe cold: the downbeat quality of the monologue was very apparent as his vocal control slipped away.
Jurowski's choice of companion piece was the adagio from Mahler's incomplete 10th Symphony. As with the Wagner, you soon find yourself wanting to hear the rest of it in one of the several posthumous completions. And as with Tristan, Jurowski hasn't yet quite got the measure of its implacable, noble span, though he invests individual sections with formidable power. Orchestrally, it could have been stronger: the LPO, superb in Wagner, were altogether more tentative here.
