Karina Canellakis
Critical Acclaim for Karina Canellakis conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival
BBCSSO/Canellakis review – electrifying trio of women unleash the horror in Strauss’s Elektra
Making the most of a huge orchestra, conductor Karina Canellakis treated the dissonant score with relish, but the evening belonged to the singers, with even the tiniest role superbly realised.
Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey carries a content warning for “strong violence and intense mythological horror”, but even its goriest scenes do not match the mythological horror Richard Strauss produced nearly 120 years earlier in Elektra, whose special effects are confined to the 111-piece orchestra. The heckelphones, basset horns and Wagner tubas Strauss adds to an already outsized band makes staging Elektra unfeasible for all but the best-resourced companies. But the extraordinary colours he draws from the orchestra and the storytelling he entrusts to it make concert performances particularly rewarding.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra played Strauss’s most dissonant score with relish, responsive to Karina Canellakis’s efficient, economical gestures. Brutal climaxes were suitably overwhelming, but equally striking was the refined string sound in occasional moments of repose. Clarity was exceptional, as whips crackled, flutes fluttered and trombones groaned; balance almost always excellent.
The Guardian | Read the full review
Elektra review — one of the most visceral experiences opera has to offer
Conducted by Karina Canellakis, the musicians of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra tore through Strauss’s score as though their lives depended on it. Performances like this should have the Orchestra of Scottish Opera looking over its shoulder, so mesmerically powerful was their playing. Unleashed from the pit onto the Usher Hall stage, they roared through the great climaxes — such as Elektra’s grimly prophetic vision to her mother about who will be sacrificed — but found playing of remarkable subtlety in the beauty of the recognition scene or the grisly aural mosaic of Clytemnestra’s monologue, which glinted with appallingly clear detail.
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Canellakis cut an uncommonly composed figure on the podium, an indication of her iron grip on this huge span of music. Eschewing all melodrama, she focused everything towards the all-engulfing power of Elektra’s final dance, while allowing plenty of ebb and flow to let the music breathe. Who needs any staging when the drama cuts to the heart as powerfully as this?