Erwartung

Alpesh Chauhan

What happens when music doesn’t aim to impress but dares to feel? The great traditions fracture, making room for something rawer and deeply personal.

In Erwartung, Arnold Schoenberg abandons all form. A woman alone at night in a forest stumbles across the lifeless body of her beloved. What follows is an uninterrupted stream of emotions: confusion, fear, grief and rage. Sung by soprano Ingela Brimberg, who recently caused a sensation at La Monnaie as Brünnhilde in the Ring, this monologue gives a voice to a profoundly unsettled inner world.

By contrast, Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll is an intimate gift of love, written for Cosima and their newborn. The notes are bathed in tenderness and domestic bliss, a rare moment of warmth. With the Adagio from his Tenth Symphony, Gustav Mahler reaches a fragile conclusion. Farewell, doubt and stillness unfold here uncompromisingly. Conductor Alpesh Chauhan adds subtle visual touches, giving the evening an extra layer of depth.