After Antikrist (1921-3) was initially rejected by the Copenhagen Royal Theatre, Langgaard extensively revised it (1926-30) - with a new libretto, again of his own devising - but performances still did not materialize, and it was only performed complete in 1980, 28 years after the composer's death. The reasons for its rejection are not hard to fathom: the subject - indeed the title alone - was deemed unsuitable, though its text accorded quite closely to the spirit of the times, owing much to theosophist and symbolist teachings. On closer inspection Antikrist has more in common dramatically with eighteenth-century oratorio than with opera. In the prologue, Lucifer sends - with God's acquiescence - the Antichrist into the world; in the final scene ('Perdition', an alternative title for the opera) the Antichrist is destroyed by God. In between five scenes illustrate subjects such as 'Vainglory', 'Despair' and 'Lust' using stock Moralistic characters, such as the Mouth Speaking Great Things, Despondency, the Great Whore (enthusiastically sung by Dimitriades) and Hate. If these sound Bunyanesque, the conception was not that of The Pilgrim's Progress: Langgaard depicts a world where the Antichrist is not out of place; when he is destroyed one wonders whether anything has changed.
Stylistically, the opera is extremely eclectic. The prelude has an engaging homespun quality redolent of Ives or middle-period Copland. Lucifer's entry in scene 1 plunges the music into a Wagnerian-Straussian landscape that holds good for most of the rest of the work, though there are extraordinary excursions along the way, into Korngoldian opulence, Janaeek, late Nielsen, 1950s expressionism as in Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and a clumsy Ravelian waltz in scene 4 that dissolves into the kind of heart-stopping violin solo one finds in Havergal Brian's later symphonies. These mainly accidental allusions are part-and-parcel of Langgaard's style, and do somehow naturally hang together.
This performance is a good one, with no weak links in the cast. The Tyrolean orchestra copes well, although the strings in particular sound exposed in places. If the recording does them few favours, it does possess an opera-house acoustic, capturing faithfully the sound of the stage premiere, given last May in Innsbruck. Comparisons with the only previous (and now deleted) recording, made in an EMI studio in 1986 and conducted by Ole Schmidt, are unhelpful, not least because of alterations to the score for this production, such as the omission of the Prelude to the first scene and the transference of that to scene 2 to preface the fifth instead. All in all, a very worthy enterprise, which deserves every success.'