My end is my beginning. Having tried about every recording of Das Rheingold in the catalogue, in a vain search for an ideal version that wasn’t Solti’s, I now return to the version which introduced me to the work as an undergraduate – borrowed from the University record library in the early 1960s – and which subsequently was the second opera recording that I bought. The first was the Erich Kleiber Marriage of Figaro, an earlier Decca recording which still wears its years lightly (Decca 466 369 2 or Documents 222932), and Mozart and Wagner have remained my two favourite opera composers ever since. The Decca recording of the Todesverkündiging and Act III of Die Walküre (Kirsten Flagstad, Set Svanholm and Solti) soon joined my collection and, later, the Karajan Götterdämmerung.

With the advent of CD, I bought the Solti versions of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung – living with the Karajan LPs of the latter had convinced me that his was not the Ring that I wanted, despite its many virtues, and the Boulez, though it made good television, did not appeal – but I looked elsewhere for the first two operas in the cycle. Leinsdorf’s Walküre was, and remains, a satisfying alternative to Solti, especially as it comes on three mid-price CDs instead of the usual four, thanks to Leinsdorf’s tendency to push the tempo. (430 391-2 but no longer listed by UK dealers though it appears to be available from Amazon.com and other US dealers on 470 443.)

The Flagstad/Solti Act III recording, now extremely well refurbished (96kHz, 24-bit), makes an excellent supplement to it. (467 124-2 – see review by CC. Incredibly, this CD seems to have been deleted and is not even available to download. Surely it must reappear as a Decca Original, otherwise Arkiv to the rescue, perhaps? Or look out for remainders.) Her companion recording of Act I with Hans Knappertsbusch is available on Australian Eloquence (466 678-2).

Rheingold, however, remained elusive. Marek Janowski on Eurodisc/RCA is very good, but lacks that final degree of magic and soon found its way to the back of the cupboard with the CDs that are rarely played – in any case, his version is now available only in a complete Ring: excellent value, but not my ideal , though Theo Adam is superb and the original presentation of Rheingold alone was excellent for a budget-price set – more lavish, in fact, than the new Decca reissue (82876 55709 2).

Just for fun I bought Günther Neuhold’s live 1993-5 recording, available incredibly cheaply (Documents 223057); no libretto but an otherwise lavish presentation for the price, complete with Arthur Rackham illustrations. This very decent account is also available as part of a complete Ring, which I have seen on sale for as little as £9.99. (CF was not impressed by much of the singing in his review of the complete Brilliant Classics incarnation of the Neuhold – see review).

My most recent purchase, the mid-price reissue of Bernard Haitink’s EMI digital recording (3 58699 2, also available as a complete Ring package) certainly has a great deal going for it but, again, it turns out not to be my ideal version. At around the same price as this Decca reissue, it comes in a cardboard box with no libretto.

My colleagues DH and CC had too many reservations about the Naxos/Lothar Zagrosek for me to go for that version (see review). Nor does Barenboim seem to offer that ideal account, unless one is seeking a DVD version – see review. GF was not entirely enthusiastic about the ‘Australian’ Rheingold – see review – but very recently he made Decca’s complete DVD recording of the Ring under Michael Schønwandt his Recording of the Month; I haven’t yet had time to sample this, though it looks very promising – see GF’s enthusiastic review. (Decca 074 3264)

I have yet to hear the Keilberth versions of any of the operas on Testament, which have won so many golden opinions, or the Kempe Ring from 1957 recorded at Covent Garden and available complete from Testament (again) or opera by opera from Walhall.

So, when I saw this Solti recording offered for review, I speedily placed my bid for it – I’d just about come to the conclusion that I was going to buy it, anyway. Distance can sometimes lend a nostalgic enchantment that disappears on reacquaintance, but such has not been the case here: this Rheingold goes right back to the top of the list. I was very pleased to receive the Hyperion Helios reissue of Francisco Guerrero’s Missa Sancta et immaculata in the same package (CDH55313 – expect an enthusiastic recommendation), but this Decca set pips it at the post as my Bargain of the Month. Some dealers are still offering this recording more cheaply in its previous incarnation (455 556 2), making it even more of a bargain for the time being.

This Solti version is not ideal in all respects: the orchestral contribution from the VPO can almost be taken for granted, not just in the superb orchestral opening, the descent to Niebelheim and the depiction of the entry into Valhalla; they also accompany the voices clearly without ever swamping them – they can probably play Wagner almost as well in their sleep as the music of Strauss for the New Year’s Day Concert – but, though the singing is never less than thoroughly satisfactory, some of the singers were not at the peak of their career.

Kirsten Flagstad in particular was 62 even when she made the Walküre Act III recording a year earlier, having ‘retired’ in 1952, but her second-best is more than good enough for me and, in any case, her role in Rheingold as Fricka is far less central than her Brünnhilde in Walküre. In both operas one somehow hears the wonderful voice that was through its slightly tremulous afterlife. Birgit Nilsson, Leinsdorf’s Brünnhilde, who took over that role in the remaining Solti operas and sang them very well, would have been in better voice, but she didn’t quite (yet) have the Flagstad magic. When Wotan praises the newly-created Valhalla (Vollendet das ewige Werk) and Fricka replies that she is more worried about the fate of Freia (Mir bangt es um Freia) reminding Wotan of the price he must pay (Vergaßest du was du vergabst?) the slight tremulousness is actually a vocal advantage.

What makes this version extra special is the sense of drama, achieved through Solti’s direction and the commitment of the singers and aided by John Culshaw’s magic as producer. Solti’s tempi fall midway between Neuhold and Haitink on the one hand (4 and 3 minutes, respectively, slower overall) and Janowski on the other (6 minutes faster). Since this is the version of Rheingold that I first got to know, I am, of course, biased, but it doesn’t seem to me that Solti’s pace can be faulted in any particular and, in any case, the differences are minimal. If any opera dictates its own pace, Rheingold is it.

The recording of Walküre III was a significant development; for Rheingold the Sonicstage technique was even more effective. More developments were yet to come, notably the advent of quieter editing facilities in 1964, in time for the last two operas, but even in 1958 the Decca engineers were achieving a fidelity which is still remarkable. Without everything coming into place at once, it would never have happened – a later broadcast concert version of Siegfried with different singers comes nowhere near repeating the magic.

When Wotan and Loge descend to Nibelheim, you can really imagine their descent; when Alberich bullies Mime, the menace is palpable and it becomes even more so as Wotan and Loge work their trick on him. When Alberich dons the Tarnhelm to transform himself, the magic is conveyed in the very sound that we hear.

The effects would all have counted for nothing had the performers not played their parts. Set Svanholm’s Loge, for example, is masterful. Compared with his earlier Wagner performances, the part of Loge may have seemed a let-down, but he sings it perfectly. Without adopting the sneering tone that some singers bring to the part, he plays the role forthrightly – some have even said too forthrightly – but he hints at the detached role of this misfit among the gods, the one who stands back at the end of the opera and observes that Wotan has sown the seeds of his own destruction: Ihrem Ende eilen sie zu – they are hastening towards their end.

In the Old Norse poem Vøluspá, Loki turns on his former colleagues at the end of the world and brings about Ragnarøk, the downfall of the gods, which Wagner translates as Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods:

Kjóll ferr austan, / koma munu Muspells of løg lýðir, / en Loki stýrir; fara fíflmegir / með freka allir, þeim er bróðir / Byleists í før. [A ship comes from the east; there shall come across the sea from Muspell (hell) its inhabitants – Loki is the steersman; the monstrous brood comes, all the men, and in company with them the brother of Byleist (i.e. Loki?) goes.] (Vøluspá stanza 51, text from Snorri Sturlasson, Edda: Gylfaginning, ed. A Faulkes, (London: University College for Viking Society for Northern Research, 1988, p.51).

Das Rheingold was the first instalment in what became, over the following seven years, ‘The Decca Ring’. As John Culshaw makes clear in Ring Resounding, his book about the recording of the cycle, when Das Rheingold was set down, there was by no means any certainty that the remaining parts of the tetralogy would also be made as a series of studio recordings. In 1958, such a project was a dauntingly expensive commercial risk. However, this particular recording proved to be the springboard for what was to follow; it gave Decca executives the confidence to sanction further recordings.

In late 2023, I reviewed the Solti recording of Götterdämmerung, newly remastered from SACD. Decca had already released the other three parts of the tetralogy in this format; my colleague Paul Corfield Godfrey had reviewed the remastered version of Siegfried and, based on his enthusiasm and my own experience of the other music dramas in the SACD format, I invested in my own copy of Siegfried. Now, I’ve been able to obtain a copy of Das Rheingold to review; I also have a copy of Die Walküre and my appraisal of that on SACDs will follow shortly.

The booklets accompanying all four SACD sets include an article by Dominic Fyfe, the Decca executive who has been responsible for the production of these remastered releases – and also for Decca’s superb remastering of Britten’s War Requiem (review). Fyfe tells us that Decca “have utilised a completely new set of high-definition 24 bit/192 kHz transfers of the original two-track stereo master tapes”. There’s further enlightenment as to the nature of the task: “Working with 38 reels of original master tapes – some up to 65 years old and spanning seven years of recording – there were inevitably instances where some individual tapes needed edit repairs or suffered oxide shedding. Tapes in poor condition were baked for ten hours at 55˚C to restore their integrity”. MusicWeb has already published a discussion of this remastering – and the previous remastering history of all four recordings – in an article by Jack Lawson.

Approaching this latest remastering, I adopted a similar approach to the one I used when reviewing Götterdämmerung: in addition to listening to the opera on SACD, I made excerpted comparisons between the 1984 CD release (kindly loaned to me by Len Mullenger), my copy of the 2012 BD-A, and the brand-new remastering on SACD. To ensure a level playing field, I listened to everything on the same player, a Marantz UD7007. However, I found that I needed to make fewer audio comparisons this time round; it didn’t take me long to establish conclusively that the SACD version offers the best sound.

Famously, Das Rheingold included in its cast Kirsten Flagstad as Fricka. She had been encouraged to come out of retirement to make some recordings for Decca and this project proved to be the pinnacle of what we might regard as her little Indian summer in the recording studio. Culshaw hoped that she might take part in subsequent instalments of the cycle but time was not on her side. The cancer that was to kill her gradually undermined her health and this great Wagner soprano died in December 1962. The role of Fricka is, of course, far smaller in scale than that of Brünnhilde, for which Flagstad had won such renown; yet it is still an important role and Flagstad brings all her long Wagnerian experience to it. I honestly don’t think there’s any audible sign of declining powers; on the contrary, she characterises the role marvellously and with great understanding; furthermore, her voice is in excellent condition. So, for example, she’s an admirable foil to Wotan in their first exchanges in Scene 1. In Scene 2 she brings ideal expression to ‘Wotan, Gemahl’, while much later on, during Scene 4, I greatly admired the expressiveness and full tone with which she invests ‘Wo willst du, Wotan?’

Das Rheingold was also notable for the sole appearance in the cycle of George London (1920-1985). Wotan was one of his signature roles and many have regretted that he did not feature in any of the subsequent recordings. Culshaw explained in Ring Resounding that London had been his choice for this one assignment, rather than Hans Hotter, because “I have always felt that Rheingold required, dramatically and musically, a young-sounding Wotan, and the part had never really suited Hotter, at least during the years since the end of the war”. Whatever the respective merits of these two great Wagner singers, I don’t think there’s any doubt that London really delivers the goods in this recording. From the outset he sounds very imposing: in Scene 1, he’s majestic in his delivery of ‘Vollendet das ewige Werk!’ He makes superb contributions to the riveting exchanges with Alberich and Loge that lie at the heart of the drama – the intensity of his tussle with Alberich in Scene 4 for possession of the ring is palpable, even though one can’t see what is going on; this is great vocal acting, both by London and by Gustav Neidlinger. As Rheingold draws to a close, London’s rendition of ‘Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge’ is simply magnificent.

The rest of the cast is equally strong. Set Svanholm is a marvellous, cunning Loge. Claire Watson conveys the terror of Freia when she is held as the giants’ hostage. As portrayed by Walter Kreppel and Kurt Böhme respectively, Fasolt and Fafner are big characters in every sense of the word. I also much admired Jean Madeira’s short but imperious appearance as Erda, warning Wotan against keeping the ring. There’s an argument, though, for saying that Gustav Neidlinger as Alberich vies with George London to be the star of the show (if I may use such a flippant term in this context). His malevolent portrayal of this insidious character is frighteningly complete. I’d hate, for example, to be one of the Nibelungs under his command; no wonder their screams (voiced by forty young boys) are so realistic. He plays his full part in making the exchanges with Loge and Wotan such a compelling experience. Then, his performance reaches its peak as he delivers his curse in Scene 4. Has this crucial passage ever been delivered on disc with more chilling bitterness and malevolence than here, I wonder? Revenge, they say, is a dish best eaten cold but here Alberich is hot for revenge. It’s not just the vocal colouring that Neidlinger brings to this episode; the way he enunciates the words is an object lesson. Undoubtedly, his delivery of the curse was the product of long thought and practice as well as great role experience; yet Neidlinger’s triumph, here and elsewhere, is that as he makes Wagner’s music leap off the page; everything sounds completely spontaneous.

There is, of course, another contender for the ‘star of the show’ title: the Vienna Philharmonic. Superbly conducted by Solti, this great ensemble demonstrates in spades how vital a protagonist Wagner intended the orchestra to be. It’s one of the glories of this remastering that the orchestral writing emerges with such clarity. Actually, some listeners may feel there’s a slight downside in that the distinctive tone of the VPO oboes registers more vividly than in earlier remasterings; but, if you’re not a fan of the sound made by the VPO oboes, let me assure you this is but a very small price to pay. In all respects the orchestra is here presented magnificently.

That’s evident right at the outset. Given the musical complexities that are to follow in the cycle as a whole, including in Rheingold, it’s astonishing that Wagner uses the simplest of musical means to open the tetralogy. The very opening of the Vorspiel provides an excellent demonstration of the respective merits of the CD, BD-A and SACD versions. On CD the double bass pedal point is quite soft and the eight horns, entering one by one, each make their mark. As the music unfolds the sound is good and the increasing tension of Solti’s conducting comes across well. Replace the CD and put the BD-A disc into the player and you hear an enhanced firmness in the bass pedal note and each of the horn entries is a bit better defined. In addition, the crescendo and the addition of more and more instruments are reproduced in fuller sound than was the case with the CD. But it’s the SACD that really shows off the prowess of the VPO to best advantage. There’s a real solidity to the pedal point, even though the note is played quietly. Throughout the prelude one can hear even more detail; as an example, the rushing figurations played by the lower strings from 2:42.

A little later, the first appearance of Fasolt and Fafner is heralded by a thunderous orchestral passage; it’s arresting on CD but when you hear the music on SACD there can be no doubt that giants are in the offing. And the orchestra is equally impressive – and impressively recorded – when accompanying the singers. As one instance, I noticed far more inner instrumental detail than ever before as Loge sings the passage beginning ‘Was Sinnt nun Wotan so Wild?’ Later, in Scene 3, when Alberich uses the magic of the tarnhelm to manifest himself as a serpent, the VPO’s low brass illustrate the moment with superb menace, conveyed thrillingly on the SACD. The rainbow bridge is gorgeously enriched by the six harps, whose contribution registers ideally in the new remastering. Finally, as Das Rheingold draws to a close, the Gods enter Valhalla accompanied by the VPO in their full pomp. The brass are utterly majestic in these closing pages, while the horns, who got the proceedings under way more than two hours ago, quietly emerging from the depths of the Rhine, now peal out triumphantly. From first bar to last, the Vienna Philharmonic are magnificent.

I must not forget to mention Sir Georg Solti. His way with Wagner is not to the taste of all Wagnerians. However, it seems to me that his dramatic, urgent style is particularly suited to the compressed nature of Das Rheingold. And in saying that, I’m not intending to imply that he skates over the more poetic moments; for my money, he doesn’t. He’s also very successful at conveying the tension, both overt and implied, in the music. I find his way with the music convincing and compelling. It’s his sense of the drama, as much as the characterisations of his superb cast that makes passages such as the outwitting of Alberich and his subsequent curse such riveting examples of music theatre.

This particular recording of Das Rheingold – the first studio recording the work had received – became renowned for its imaginative effects. Nowadays we would take such effects for granted but they were both innovative and, in some quarters, controversial at the time. Such things as the thunderclap after Donner has struck his hammer in Scene 4 – and the hammer blow itself – sound absolutely superb on the SACD – and pretty impressive on both the CD and the BD-A. I’ve already referenced the Nibelungs’ screams, which come over really well. And then there are the famous 18 anvils: what a din they make during the descent into Niebelheim! Decca went to a lot of trouble to assemble all those anvils – and their players; it was a great investment. The other-worldly sound of Alberich’s voice from within the tarnhelm was another stroke of genius by John Culshaw and his team; it’s brilliantly successful. Arguably, the team’s recording flair and skills are shown to best advantage when Alberich reluctantly summons the Niebelungs to bring up the gold; what a graphic episode that is in this recording.

I should say a word or two about Decca’s presentation of the recording. One issue that is inescapable when recording Das Rheingold is the continuity of the music and therefore the question of side breaks. Of course, that doesn’t arise on BD-A; the presentation of the opera is seamless. Decca issued Das Rheingold on three CDs, necessitating two disc changes; one was part way through Scene 2 while the other was in Scene 4 where Alberich sings ‘Gezahlt hab’ ich’. Neither is ideal. The SACD release has enabled Decca to fit everything onto just two discs: the break comes 4:31 into Scene 3 where Alberich sings ‘Schau, Du Schelm!’ Again, the break isn’t ideal but I can’t think where else it could have occurred.

One advantage that the SACD issue has over both the CD and BD-A versions is the size of the booklet. It’s LP-size and that means that you can read the excellent documentation and, crucially, the libretto quite easily; the booklets for the earlier releases use a minute font.

The elephant in the room is the price of this SACD set. Currently (February 2024) you’ll have to pay around £70, which is a lot for a pair of SACDs. However, I’m in no doubt that the sound quality is significantly better than Decca have been able to achieve on previous issues of this recording. There’s only one word for it: stunning. You really have to pinch yourself and remember that you are listening to a recording which was made in September and October 1958. The results we can hear on this pair of discs testify to the great skill – and patience – of remastering engineer Philip Siney and his colleagues. Even more, they show just how remarkable were the original efforts of John Culshaw and his gifted team.

But I’m going to let my colleague Ralph Moore have the last word. In his survey of ‘Ring’ cycles, he delivered this verdict on this famous recording: “This is the best of Solti’s studio tetralogy, crowned by the magnificent Wotan of George London. Everything works here, from the guest appearance of Flagstad’s Fricka to Svanholm’s crafty, mellifluous Loge to Neidlinger’s malevolent Alberich – and there are sonic highlights too, such as the striking of Donner’s hammer which has never been surpassed. No other recording approaches it.” To which I’d merely add that you can now hear it in sound that completely justifies Ralph’s enthusiasm.

John Quinn | MARCH 4, 2024