Opera and classical concerts to watch at home: our critics' picks – week six

Quatuor Danel (Philharmonie de Paris)

The French string quartet should have been a significant presence at the Wigmore Hall this spring, playing Shostakovich and Weinberg. They stand alone in having recorded the complete quartet cycles of both composers, though Weinberg only features here as an encore, the vibrant scherzo from his fifth quartet. Their main programme is Austrian, old and new, opening with Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue, K546, originally conceived for two keyboards. (The British Library holds the manuscript of the fugue, the extraordinary adagio actually an afterthought.) Together with Haydn’s Op 20, No 5 and Beethoven’s Op 132, these are all highly focused and intense performances. Not that Olga Neuwirth’s Hadal Akroate is exactly light relief. Taking her title from a description of vampire squid in the treatise Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, which dives into a “literal and philosophical ocean”, Neuwirth creates a soundscape alternating between acute tension and moments of eerie underwater serenity. Closeups show the players fixing paper clips and foldback clips to the strings, while the unusual bowing techniques wreak havoc with the second violin’s bow-hairs - with no time to break them off, they are left to flail in the air, bright filaments in momentary visual counterpoint. Rian Evans

Davide Penitente

There was a time when horse ballets and “hippodramas” were all the rage and equestrian theatres were ultra-fashionable, specialising in extravagant re-enactments of famous military outings. Nearly 200 years later, horses are a sufficiently rare sighting in classical music that a 2015 performance (currently available via Arte.TV) of Mozart’s oratorio Davide Penitente K 469 from Salzburg – complete with equestrian ballet choreographed by Bartabas and executed by the Versailles Academy of Equestrian Arts – is pretty surreal. But it isn’t just strange viewing for strange times. There is also fine playing from the Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble under Marc Minkowski (some beautifully shaped wind solos emerging from a truly deluxe period-instrument sound) while the Salzburg Bach Choir conjures fragility and frenetic energy by turn. The solo vocal singing is impressive too: French tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac is luminous, his lyricism always light-touch, French mezzo Marianne Crebassa serves up spine-tingling richness in her voice’s lower reaches and German soprano Christiane Karg exudes musical elegance throughout. The horses, you might be relieved to know, remain largely inaudible – but this unique hybrid performance is bizarrely compelling. (Available until 14/05/2020) Flora Willson

Parsifal (Opera Vlaanderen)

The lockdown makes Wagner’s Parsifal a work whose time has come. That is not just because Parsifal’s more than four hours of music is made for an audience with time on its hands, or because the late Roger Scruton’s book on the opera is about to appear. It’s also because, dealing as it does with a wounded community craving rebirth, Parsifal has rarely seemed more contemporary. This 2018 performance from Antwerp by Opera Vlaanderen (on OperaVision) is not ideal for Parsifal first-timers, however. Tatjana Gürbaca’s production strives to upend the work to say something much more brutal than Wagner intended, and you will need at least A-level Parsifal to make some sense of it. But it is impressively conducted by Cornelius Meister (a good name for a Wagnerian). Erin Caves in the title role and Štefan Kocán as a quirkily young Gurnemanz are lighter voiced than normal but both very watchable. Tanja Ariane Baumgartner’s Kundry is vocally and theatrically the stand-out, even though Gürbaca’s conception of the role is perverse. Martin Kettle

Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse/Sokhiev

Tugan Sokhiev and his Toulouse orchestra preface Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto and Fifth Symphony with the French première of Qigang Chen’s Itinéraire d’une Illusion in this striking concert, filmed during a visit to the Paris Philharmonie last November. Shanghai-born and Paris based, Chen studied with Messiaen, whose influence hovers over the exquisitely crafted textures of Itinéraire, which inhabits territory between dream and obsession as eerily reiterated monotones and fragmentary figurations first undermine, then eventually invade the lyrical reflections with which it begins. Classy, as always, the ONCT play it superbly for Sokhiev, who also does fine things with Shostakovich here. Edgar Moreau is the exemplary soloist in the concerto, his sparse lyricism speaking volumes in a performance by turns sardonic and austere. The Fifth, meanwhile, has tremendous nobility without losing sight of its ambiguities of mood and expression: there’s tangible grief in the slow movement; and the finale, assertively defiant rather than an expression of vacuous triumph, is electrifying. Tim Ashley

The Fairy Queen (Glyndebourne festival)

Abundant and witty, a riot of winged creatures and fantastic costumes – not forgetting the ballet of the bonking bunnies – Glyndebourne’s 2009 classic staging of Purcell’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers gorgeous lockdown distraction. Brilliantly performed by a top cast (Lucy Crowe, Carolyn Sampson, Ed Lyon, Andrew Foster-Williams) and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by William Christie, this is baroque theatre at its most spectacular. It’s beautifully and sexily captured in Jonathan Kent’s production with designs by Paul Brown, choreography by Kim Brandstrup and a lineup of extremely rude Mechanicals. Part speech, part music, this mixed-genre piece is usually referred to as semi-opera. It’s more Restoration musical, really, with songs, dances and dialogue. The live filming works well, right down to the final shower of rose petals over Glyndebourne’s auditorium. Forgotten since its premiere in 1692 until last century, too many stagings have treated The Fairy Queen prudishly. Not here. Racy enchantment all the way. Fiona Maddocks