Wagner: The Golden Ring (SACD review)
Great Scenes from Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Various singers; Sir Georg Solti, Vienna Philharmonic. Decca SACD 485 3364 (remastered).
By John J. Puccio
“The greatest of all the achievements in the history of the gramophone record.” --Gramophone Magazine
“No one has bettered Solti’s Decca Ring in terms of sweep, grandeur, dramatic immediacy, and sheer adrenalin.” --Stereophile
Twice voted “the greatest recording of all time” --Gramophone and BBC Music Magazines
The honors, praise, accolades, awards, and popularity of Sir Georg Solti’s Decca recordings of Richard Wagner’s complete Ring of the Nibelungen from the late 1950’s and early 60’s have never diminished. So much so that the folks at Decca had already reissued them several times previously on vinyl and CD and have now released them again, this time from high-definition masters in hybrid SACD. Good things just keep getting better.
And yet.... I’d always considered Solti’s Ring one of the great recording sets of all time, but THE greatest? Surely, there are other records even greater. Then I considered the performances and the sound of the Solti set, plus the sheer epic proportions of the project, and try as I might I couldn’t come up with anything else I thought was better all the way around. So, yeah, it’s nice to have it in current state-of-the-art SACD remasters.
Although the production hardly needs recounting, I’ll just remind the reader that Decca spared no expense assembling one of the best casts of performers possible for the time. Not only Sir Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic were aboard, but singers Kirsten Flagstad, Christa Ludwig, Hans Hotter, George London, Eberhard Wachter, James King, Brigitte Fassbaender, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Wolfgang Windgassen, Birgit Nilsson, Claire Watson, Gottlob Frick, Gwyneth Jones, Gustave Neidlinger, Joan Sutherland, Lucia Popp, and Regine Crespin, among many others. Combine all this talent with a production team headed up by John Culshaw, Gordon Parry, and James Brown, and you are bound to get great results.
So, the disc under consideration here is Decca’s highlights album from the four operas. From Das Rheingold there’s “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla”; from Die Walkure there are “Ride of the Valkyries” and “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music”; from Siegfried the “Forging Scene,” “Forest Murmurs,” and “Siegfried’s Horn Call”; and from Gotterdammerung “Siegfried’s Funeral March” and ”Brunnhilde’s Immolation Scene.” However, don’t expect the booklet notes to be of much help. The pages are either mistakenly printed out of order, or somebody at Decca has an odd sense of sequencing. In any case, there isn’t very much information here about the operas, the singers, the characters, or the importance of any of it. There’s far more information about the new audio remastering than about the music itself. So, I recommend you just listen and enjoy.
Producers John Culshaw and James Brown and engineers Gordon Parry recorded the operas in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria in 1958-65. Producer Dominic Fyfe and engineer Philip Siney remastered the tapes in SACD hybrid stereo in 2022. The listener may play the disc in either SACD two-channel stereo from an SACD player or regular two-channel stereo from a regular CD player. I used a Sony SACD player and made my comparisons to the same passages issued by Decca in 1988 in regular CD stereo. In addition to the single disc of highlights I reviewed, the folks at Decca have also made the complete recordings available on vinyl and hybrid SACD editions.
I suppose I’d be remiss if I didn’t describe some of the technical details of this new Decca remaster, so I quote from a booklet note: “For this 2022 edition we have utilised a completely new set of high-definition 24 bit/192 kHz transfers of the original two-track stereo master tapes. ...The vastly extended dynamic range and frequency response obtained from working with transfers at this resolution allows, for example, the glorious overtones of the Vienna brass and strings to be heard as never before; tape hiss and noise reduction benefit from a far more sophisticated set of tools--including iZotope RX-9 and CEDAR Retouch--which are both more effective and less invasive than previous programmes. This has always been a fabulous sounding recording and we hope this latest version takes us a step closer to being back at the Sofiensaal all those decades ago. It is a story which never tires of retelling.”
Anyway, I put the new disc in a Sony SACD player and the older disc in a regular Sony CD player and switched back and forth between them for an hour or so. Adjusting the output levels proved a pain because not only does the newer disc play several decibels louder throughout its dynamic range, but the tracks are a bit different as well. The older disc has seven tracks and a total playing time of 69 minutes, 21 seconds. The newer disc has fourteen tracks and a playing time of 76 minutes, 49 seconds. Although most of the music is the same, the engineers have begun and ended each piece of music at different places. With some effort I determined the following:
The new SACD is slightly cleaner, clearer, and smoother. It is also slightly wider in its dynamic range, meaning there is somewhat greater output in the louder passages and somewhat softer output in the quieter passages. The new SACD could also at times appear brighter, making the older CD sound duller by comparison. Personally, I have never been convinced the Decca recording itself was the greatest-sounding piece of engineering I’ve ever heard (good but not the ultimate in state-of-the-art), and the new SACD still doesn’t persuade me otherwise. But there is no denying the SACD is generally an improvement over the older release.
Solo voices on the SACD are definitely improved, more balanced, more polished overall, with less distortion in the higher registers. So, yes, the SACD is the winner in terms of definition, refinement, and dynamics. Yet, is it worth the upgrade? The differences are not, after all, night and day (although I’m sure many an audiophile would disagree with me). For the dedicated Wagner fan, buying the entire four-opera collection on SACD is probably a given. However, for the casual opera listener, perhaps starting with the highlights disc is the more useful approach.
JJP
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor
Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.
Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.
Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor
For nearly 30 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.
For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2024 Honda CRV Sport L Hybrid, I stream music from my phone through its adequate but hardly outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through a Roku Streambar Pro system (soundbar plus four surround speakers and a 10" sealed subwoofer) that has surprisingly nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence and reasonable price. Finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker and a pair of Google Pro Earbuds for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technologies that enable us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.
William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor
Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.
The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.
Ryan Ross, Contributor
I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.
I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.
Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst
I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.
Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.
Mission Statement
It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.
When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.
So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio
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The comparison should be made with the Blu-ray Audio set where you get high resolution audio. And you also get all four operas on one disc.
ReplyDeleteThis release has the highest compression so far. The waveform shows definite clipping and horns are very harsh. It is loud, loud, loud. I am going to be very suspiciaous of any future Decca release. Here is the log file for the Dynamic Range of this release.
ReplyDeleteThe dynamic range of the new remaster is around a 9, which is in the red basically. The old James Locke? About 15. Very excellent DR. Same as on the Blu-ray Audio.
There is also something else I would like to mention... the pages, yes are indeed in the wrong order, but something else....? The tracks are not really labeled correctly. I had to go to spotify to see the correct track listings... wait a moment... the booklet has incomplete track information, but the spotify website has the accurate track information? Interesting.
According to Roon, the dynamic range of the 24/192 FLAC version is 17
ReplyDeleteIn the 2022 transfer of Das Rheingold, I heard flutter and wow in the first 60 second of Track 7 Scene 2: Wotan! Gemahl! Erwache! (Fricka, Wotan). The Wagner horns were playing before the Kirsten Flagstad sang for the first time. The flutter and wow don't exist in the 2014 version.
ReplyDeleteDynamic range is brutal and the recording the best version available by miles
ReplyDelete