Concert by Various, Bluebeard's Castle by Bartók, hAo 21 Beal 2021, Ó (2021/2021), Seoltóir Susanna Mälkki, Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany

It is “a masterpiece, a musical volcano that erupts for sixty minutes of tragic intensity and leaves us with only one desire: to hear it again.” That is how Zoltán Kodály described Béla Bartók’s only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. Composed in 1911, the one-act work is a brilliantly orchestrated symbolic psychological drama that takes us deep into the emotional world of the fin de siècle. “What do you see?” Bluebeard asks his bride Judith, who wants to open the seven doors of the Duke’s past. Susanna Mälkki conducts this musical psychoanalysis, which makes listeners shudder.