Richard Wagner (1813-1883) began to sketch the Ring opera story in 1848 and was finished with a fairly complete libretto by 1852. It was not until many years later that the first opera in the planned cycle of four was premiered, the sequence was as follows: Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)/1869, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)/1870, Siegfried/1871 and Göterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)/1874 – that if played one after the other would take about 15 hours. Henk de Vlieger (HDV – b. 1953) a Dutch composer, selected from those four operas a number of pre-eminent symphonic musical segments on a commission by Edo de Waart and the Radio Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and created the suite The Ring: an orchestral adventure. Its performance takes now approximately 60 minutes in total with 14 track markers in all. In my mind this beautiful work could be taken as a crash course on “Wagner: a musical introduction to mythology.”
HDV preserved intact all the original contrapuntal texture, rabid chromatics, atonal harmonies (quickly shifting or rapid changes in tonal centers), orchestration, instrumentation and sequence of leitmotifs (leading motifs – themes) created by Wagner, including his ideal Bayreuth Festival practice of the “invisible orchestra.” The music is up front but also presents in a very effective way that which Wagner called “lontano” and/or offstage instrumental location effects. For example in the relative quiet beginning of the disc the music from Das Rheingold’s prelude is heard seemingly ascending from the bowels of Valhalla where the Gods reside (Track 1 – the long Bb note on the Wagnerian tuba) and culminates some 12 minutes later in Track 4 with the theme of the Descent of the Gods Into Valhalla. Järvi’s orchestra admirably balances this slow ascent and descent with effectively managed crescendos and diminuendos truly reflecting that invisible orchestra in a virtual invisible stage. With this music HDV masterfully recreated all the inner drama contained in these four operas including Wagner’s rich orchestral palette as well as the harmonic color that characterizes his music. The same applies to the complexities of Wagner’s chromatics, which become more and more intense in their juxtaposition of themes, tonalities, rhythm and different shades of musical dynamics as the music goes on.
Järvi’s execution of the score is opulent – especially in the low and high brass – but not to the exclusion of the woodwinds and/or the subtle sounds required from the very large string choir (64 instruments); this is a well scored suite expertly performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. It should be noted that HDV newly scores some minimal harmonies for those sections where the singing originally reigned, replacing the voices with woodwind effects which are coupled to the “original” music still preserving in another form the invariably poignant climaxes that Wagner himself envisioned. For example, we can hear this affective musical effect in Track 8 with the great love scenes from Siegfried and also in Track 14’s Brünhildes Opfertat – the Valkyrie riding her horse into the flames for a virtual immolation.
Järvi and the RSNO are the real heroes of this recording and here I am not putting aside the extremely talented author of this arrangement. Järvi takes the orchestra through a clearly delineated road with a firm baton imparting exemplary pacing right from the depths of the beginning ascending notes to the apotheosis of the end. Virtuosic orchestral playing is continuously maintained throughout the whole suite and the Ride of the Valkyrie (Track 5) is absolutely impressive as performed with the required two pairs of Tenor Bb and Bass F Wagnerian tubas beginning at about 0:22 imparting to the music a profound as well as scary heroic tone and it’s no wonder that Francis Ford Coppola used this particular musical segment for his Apocalypse Now movie in the helicopter cavalry-like charge assault sequence. As a contrast the funeral music (Track 13) acquires under Järvi’s baton a touching tragic intensity which is in turn enhanced by the timpani’s tremolos (2 sets of timpani) and the end (Brünhildes immolation) has pure orchestral majesty. A real interesting thing is that despite Wagner’s open music/drama endings HDV’s arrangement comes to a virtual closure with the last chords of the music (about 40 seconds long) and leaves us with the feeling that there is a somewhat conclusive end to the story while in the original opera the music just fades away into oblivion…sort off.
The other work in this SACD – Siegfried Idyll (Tracks 15-17) – interestingly enough is like an anticlimax to the longer work that precedes it. Nothing especial about it, but how nice to have it there just when one needs to decompress from 60 minutes of unadulterated mind-bending music and be able to take a little rest before going back to listen the music again and again from the beginning.
Järvi obtains eloquent responses from the RSNO more than amply supported by the glorious 3/2 multichannel sound which incidentally was produced and engineered by none other than the Couzens brothers (Brian and Ralph). In the final analysis I strongly recommend this SACD, a must-have for music lovers and all those Wagnerites who need a real Wagner fix once in a while everyday just like I do. Incidentally I was present about 2 years ago to a live presentation of this work by an enormous orchestra and a great conductor as well; I know how this music feels Live! on a Saturday night. [Another way to decompress after this – or even to get a preview of what’s going to happen – would be to listen to Anna Russell’s half-hour analysis of the Ring…Ed.]
— John Nemaric
