The Dutchman Comes Home: Mark Berry is intrigued by a production from Amsterdam that sets tradition against modernity

The performance opens with a monochrome televisual storm, through which we see as well as hear strings, horns, kettledrums and other instruments, and eventually glimpse the conductor. Wagner’s opening bars prove furiously driven. Calmer seas greet the very slow, very soft cor anglais-led response, raindrop effects on the camera lens making clear the ‘framing’ of the filmic experience. The Overture, then, finds its roots in a backward-looking potpourri conception, as opposed to forward-looking integrated symphonism, though it is perhaps not entirely without attempts to forge such a unity.