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With the release of this disc, Chandos completes its digital remastering of the complete English National Opera Ring cycle recorded live in the late 1970s--and a fantastic set it is, too. As in the other recordings (The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, and Siegfried), Goodall shows himself to be a master Wagnerian of the first order with a sure grasp of the massive score, from its largest structures to its smallest details. His obvious passion for the music clearly inspires the ENO Orchestra to give of its best--the playing is extraordinarily powerful and perfectly attuned to the drama of each scene (Siegfried's Funeral Procession is spine-tingling). Rita Hunter has the necessary lung power to make Brunnhilde's lines soar over the orchestra, but Hunter characterizes her with subtlety, too. Even when she asks for the death of Siegfried (Alberto Remedios, bright and powerful), her voice is warm with love for him. Aage Haugland doesn't have a beautiful voice, but in many ways this helps make him an ideal Hagen, full of spite and cunning. The translation is a masterpiece in its own right, and the booklet (including libretto) is crammed with information. A must-have. --Warwick Thompson
Review
With the reissue of this set on CD, and in quite magnificent transfers, the most remarkable operatic recording enterprise ever to take place in England, or at any rate in English, reaches completion. This recording of the Ring's final drama was made on three evenings in August 1977, when Reginald Goodall conducted his last complete cycle. By then, his legendary broad tempos had grown to a quite extraordinary degree, in fact had reached the verge of hypertrophy. This performance clocks in at five hours and 12 minutes, half an hour slower even than Knappertsbusch at Bayreuth in 1951, his slowest account on disc. Allegedly, Goodall was dismayed when he heard the tapes of his performances, and certainly when he conducted Die Walküre in Wales in 1984 it was considerably swifter than when he performed it with the ENO during the 1970s. There are places in this recording where I did long for things to speed up a little, mainly because when everything is taken so broadly it is difficult to maintain dramatic impetus. That Goodall almost does is something akin to a miracle. What is evident throughout, and makes one grateful most of the time for the leisureliness of the proceedings, is that so much glorious detail is apparent that is not in anyone else's account, and scarcely could be at a faster tempo. Touches of colour, significant mezzo-piano cymbal clashes, hesitations before a harmonic shift all these are fascinating, often moving, and usually contribute to the cumulative impact of the work. For this conductor, the drama is in the detail Wagner meant every note he wrote the only way to realize his intentions is to make everything in the score tell. What that reinforces, perhaps, is that there is more than one way of playing these multi-faceted works, and that it is important that Goodall's extreme approach should be available, even if it is not the recording that one would most often go to. The kind of intense urgency which Furtwängler brings to the score means that some of this loving and lovely detail must be sacrificed. Goodall's is not the way of impetuosity. With every note in place, and the most extreme attention paid to length of line and beauty of tone, especially from the singers, the effect is of lyricism over the short term, the fervour and depth of dramatic interest arising from a contemplation of the whole. Clichés about the view from the peak of a mountain range irresistibly suggest themselves; much of the drama is in having got there at all, and then in looking back and down. It is a maximum-risk policy which happily paid off superbly on these three evenings, as it didn't always. Here, though, it is safe to say that the performance, from the opening surprisingly trim chord to the last long-held one, is consistently, incredibly, inspired. There is other Wagner conducting as great as this, in a very different way, but none that surpasses it. In the light of this, details about the singing even though there are no serious causes for complaint are beside the point. In fact much of it is absolutely worthy of the conductor's vision, above all that of the hero and heroine. Why weren't we much, much more enthusiastic about Alberto Remedios at the time? His sweet-voiced, profoundly felt and tireless Siegfried is a matter for boundless gratitude. For once, Siegfried has the status that Wagner wanted for him. His Brünnhilde is only slightly less complete. Rita Hunter's voice gleams, cuts through full orchestral textures, soars grandly and is only lacking in depth of tone. She too doesn't tire, and manages the vast spans of the Immolation without any sign of flagging. If only Goodall didn't insert that vast comma before the final bars of the work! That is really my only niggle, though its imminence always makes me tense. The surrounding and supporting cast all know their roles as well as the principals, which gives the performance a sense of security. That is a good thing, for the demands on stamina and on the listener's capacity for full-throttled emotional response are almost, but rightly, shockingly huge. Michael Tanner -- From International Record Review - subscribe now
