According to the sleeve notes, the two concert performances of Wagner’s most compact and regularly performed stage work that Edward Gardner conducted in Oslo last year are likely to be the only occasions on which Lise Davidsen will appear as Senta, since it’s not a role that she intends to sing on stage. That alone will make the set – taken from the two concert performances – a compulsory purchase for Davidsen’s many admirers, and certainly her performance is the main attraction here, though the feisty playing of the Norwegian National Opera orchestra, one of its first collaborations with Gardner after he became the company’s music director, is first-rate, too. [The Guardian]