With such a flood of outstanding archive material constantly being transferred to disc, the beginning of a new recorded Ring cycle is no longer quite the event it used to be. But the arrival of a new cycle made available at a super-budget price would be hard to ignore even if it was only half decent, and to judge from this first instalment, the Naxos Ring could be much better than that. The plan is for Jaap van Zweden to conduct the four music dramas in concert with the Hong Kong Philharmonic across four years, and for an edited recording to be released on disc later the same year. This Rheingold comes from a pair of performances given in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in January this year; Die Walküre is scheduled there for the beginning of 2016.
Van Zweden established his credentials as a Wagner interpreter with the superb Parsifal that he conducted in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 2010, which subsequently appeared on Challenge Classics.
The qualities that marked out that performance characterise this recording of Rheingold, too. The orchestral textures have a spaciousness and transparency, and an unforced sense of architectural shaping and dramatic flow; some may prefer their Wagner more monumental and confrontational, but that is not Van Zweden’s way. In terms of classic Rings on disc, his approach is much closer to that of Herbert von Karajan than any other conductor.
But the real surprise here is Matthias Goerne’s performance as Wotan. His handling of the text is as exemplary as anyone would expect from such a seasoned lieder singer, but it’s the power and gravitas that Goerne brings to the role that are so startling. There’s real dark authority to the lower reaches of his voice, and a range of colour of the upper registers that conjures up an intriguingly complex character psychologically; I can’t tell how much of that would be conveyed in a stage performance, but on disc it sounds extremely effective.
The rest of the cast may not quite be on the same level, but there are still some very fine contributions. Peter Sidhom’s Alberich combines real malevolence with a touch of the panto-mime villain; Kim Begley’s Loge is a mixture of quick intelligence and darker, deeper intent. As Fricka, Michelle DeYoung’s time will surely come in the next instalment, Walküre; here she does everything that’s required of her. Kwangchul Youn and Stephen Milling are a robust pair of giants, David Cangelosi a not too caricatured Mime, and Eri Nakamura, Aurhelia Varak and Hermine Haselböck make a nicely differentiated trio of Rhinemaidens. Unfussily, but very lucidly recorded, it’s altogether a promising start to the cycle, and the next instalment of the epic, which, as well as Goerne and DeYoung, is scheduled to include Stuart Skelton as Siegmund and Petra Lang as Brünnhilde, should be well worth hearing, too.
