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