Tristan and Isolde, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, review To draw an audience into the blissful, yearning world of Wagner's Tristan in a darkened opera house is one thing. To do it in the bright lights and gleaming modernist lines of Birmingham's Symphony Hall is quite another. It's a test of everyone's powers of persuasiveness. This performance achieved it, although those who insist that glorious, flawless singing is a prerequisite for effective performance of Wagner would have had things to complain about. Lioba Braun as Isolde sometimes had to force her tone at the top end, and Christianne Stotijn as Isolde's maid Brangaene also seemed under strain at times. As for Stephen Gould as Tristan, the power of the man was simply extraordinary; he was able to soar over Wagner's surging brass without trying. But he sang distractingly flat at times, and there was a baritone-ish gravel in the voice which at first seemed not at all right for the impetuous, naive Tristan. It was startling when Gould suddenly soared aloft into the tenor region, like seeing something earthbound unexpectedly take wing. And yet these things took on a human glow, thanks to conductor Andris Nelsons's wonderful pacing of the score. He seized on the drama's essential conflict of fevered desire and yearning for oblivion, and made it vividly real in musical terms. Flexibility of tempo was the keynote, a quality evident in Nelsons's masterly shaping of the Prelude. It issued out of nothingness in groping, hesitant notes, and constantly pushed and fell back in speed. Nelsons shrewdly drew back at the climax, opening the way to the drama to come. The contrast between worldly bustle and the still, mystical core of Wagner's opera becomes especially vivid at the end of Act 1, which was the most brilliantly effective moment in this performance. The sailors" hallooing from above (the men of the CBSO chorus in terrific form), broke with startling force into the tremulous avowals below deck. What was missing in this act was a sense of dangerous chemistry between the two lovers, who until the last moment are adversaries. One should sense them stalking around each other, hackles raised. The long duet of Act 2, when Tristan and Isolde express their dawning realisation that their love will make them "die to the world," was much more effective. But it was Matthew Best as the betrayed King Mark who provided the most purely moving moment of the evening.