Pierard/New Zealand Symphony/Judd: Ah! Perfido

Beethoven wrote his incidental music to Goethe's Egmont for a ­production in Vienna in 1810. ­Dealing with the ­transgressive love between the ­aristocratic Egmont and the ­bourgeois Klärchen – both involved in the­ ­resistance against the Spanish ­occupation of the Netherlands – the play has long been regarded as one of the great ­libertarian statements in German ­literature, and the score, ­almost ­inevitably, invites comparison with Fidelio, to which it forms a tragic counterpart. As a ­totality, it makes for occasionally awkward listening, given Beethoven's tendency to close numbers with anticipatory ­discords ­heralding speeches that are not recorded. But in ­addition to the ­famous overture, there are some ­remarkable numbers, including a ­strikingly ­feminist song for Klärchen and a passage of ­extraordinary nobility as Egmont faces ­execution. Conducted by James Judd, the ­performance is very grand, intense, at times genuinely ­ecstatic, and there are fine contributions from soprano Madeleine Pierard as a feisty Klärchen. The filler is the concert aria Ah! Perfido, which Pierard sings with extraordinary elegance and ­piercing clarity of tone.