

I can think of few operas less in need of a concert performance than The Turn of the Screw, and the presence of it in the LSO schedules was probably a legacy of Sir Colin Davis’s desire (sadly unfulfilled) to re-record an opera with which he is closely identified. For any other reason it would have been a pointless exercise, not least because full productions crop up so regularly – almost all the major UK companies have mounted the opera at some point since the turn of the millennium – and besides, how can the story’s inner demons hope to come across in a performance shorn of direction, decor or atmospheric lighting?
Witnessing an opera in-concert is a different experience from hearing it on the radio or from a recording, where the mind is free to paint its own pictures, because the business of watching singers at work is by its nature a visual experience. However persuasive the artists’ musicianship, the challenge of immersing an audience in Henry James’s shadowy world demands something special; in fact that is precisely what this excellent cast delivered.

As the spectral Quint, Andrew Kennedy sang with forthright strength and no trace of histrionics, letting the power of Britten’s inspiration look after itself. If his performance, startling and dangerous in its immediacy, was close to ideal, the Miss Jessel of Katherine Broderick was quite simply the finest I have heard. Richly expressive, haunted and haunting in equal measure, she was the embodiment (if that’s the word) of the “horrible, terrible woman” of the Governess’s nightmares. Ironically, though – and most effectively, whether or not it was intended – the disturbed interiority of Matthews’s acting meant that of the two women it was she who seemed the more like a ghost. Hers was a searing reading that makes me long to see Matthews play the role in a staging; as it is, we should soon be able at least to hear her again, as LSO Live was present to capture this triumphant gesture of respect to the memory of an eminent and wonderful conductor.
- Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 (available on BBC iPlayer for seven days afterwards)
- Further performance on Thursday 18 April 2013 at 7 p.m.
- LSO www.lso.co.uk
- Barbican www.barbican.org.uk