The last radical

A spectre haunted the first weekend of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Debussy Festival: the spectre of Richard Wagner. Debussy’s relationship with Wagner began with infatuation, and ended (as so often) in open rebellion. The young decadent who declared Parsifal ‘one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music’ later ranted that ‘30 million Boches cannot destroy French thought’ even while, tormented by cancer, he laboured to complete three late sonatas of near-infinite subtlety and grace. But there’s always the sense, as Debussy put it as early as 1890, that ‘I don’t see what can be done beyond Tristan’.

So there it was: Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod, sprawled full-stretch across the end of Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla’s opening orchestral concert. Coming out of Debussy’s Nocturnes, Grazinyte-Tyla approached it coolly. When the cellos began their long unwinding song she held back, even beyond the moment when the violins sweep upwards and most conductors let fly.