Of all Hamburg Ring Cycle premieres, the third waystation, Siegfried, has received the most applause until now. Audience members were exuberant not only about the singers and orchestra under the direction of Simone Young, but about the production as well. The transparency of the orchestra allowed the singers to really sing, in contrast to many Wagner productions in which they are often in a pure struggle against waves of instrumental force. Director Claus Guth’s finely wrought protagonists were brilliantly brought to life on stage by the excellent cast of soloists. This Ring is lucid and transparent, even when only heard in the living room. The singers, who include experienced Wagner singers like Christian Franz, Falk Struckmann and Wolfgang Koch, guarantee first-class musical standards.
REVIEW:
We can always find room for another good Ring in the recorded archives. This is shaping up so far to be a fine example. The singing cast is altogether satisfactory, if not star-studded. Every member offers a reasonably forceful and vivid impersonation of his assigned role.
Christian Franz offers a fine Siegfried, the forging scenes in I going well, with vigorous singing and the metallic sound effects as good as they come. Did you know that Siegfried’s actions follow standard metallurgical procedures for forging, annealing, heat-treating and quenching, needed to produce a good weapon? It is true! Wagner wasn’t a metallurgist, but he knew what was needed to keep the action true to life. Falk Struckmann’s Wotan- Wanderer is also forceful and gives a fine rendering of the critical scene with Erda in III. His smooth, dark voice is most effective not only here but also as the Wanderer in I and the opening scenes of II.
I wish I could be as positive about Deborah Humble’s Erda, but to me she sounds wobbly and unsteady. I suppose she’s about par for the part by current standards, which isn’t saying much. Catherine Foster, on the other hand is a good, strong Brünnhilde, not quite in the class of Flagstad or Nilsson, but surely as fine as they come at present. Alberich, Mime, and Fafner are conventionally well performed, also. Finally, Ha Young Lee was a complete newcomer to me, but she sings the forest bird’s songs more clearly, sweetly, and convincingly than anyone I’ve ever heard. Something tells me that this is not the last we shall hear from her.
The Hamburg Philharmonic is absolutely perfect, flawless, indeed thrilling. Its tone is colorful, its ensemble flawless. Simone Young leads an unhurried performance that lasts over four hours. This is usually a recipe for dullness, but she somehow manages to conduct with gorgeous tone and unfailing presentation of detail, as well as flawless presentation of larger issues. I think this must be what Wagner had in mind when he employed the word gesamtkunstwerk. Moreover, Oehms offers sound that is totally realistic without undue intrusion of gimmicks like the ones in Solti’s Decca Rheingold. Finally, there is a 145 page booklet, giving full German texts with their English translations. The introductory notes are outstanding, exploring and explaining every action in detail and the motivations of everyone concerned, including the composer. It is original and thought-provoking—one of the best essays of this genre I’ve ever encountered.
In this booklet also, there are numerous illustrations of the stagecraft, which I would suggest you not even look at, if you can resist the temptation, for they depict the cheapest, most dreary, most totally irrelevant collection of garage-sale paraphernalia you could imagine—dirty, unkempt, randomly scattered about the stage. This isn’t staging; it is a treasonous, subversive, cheap refutation of everything Wagner stood for!
But of course, that is the advantage the CD has over DVD—there’s no temptation to look at it—indeed, there’s no way of doing so. But this little rant is irrelevant to the main point that, for an audio Siegfried, this is about as good as it gets.
-- American Record Guide
