Siegfried: an Exercice in What NOT to Do

In the previous post, we saw how critical the moment of Angst and Terror at Brünnhildes awakening is. Today we will look at an example of a performance on record where this critical scene is casually glossed over in favour of bombast and melodrama. We will see how one of the most deeply problematic aspects of the Solti-Culshaw Ring is exposed in this very scene where Siegfried awakens Brünnhilde.

One bizarre aspect of this scene in the Solti-Culshaw recording is the grotesque overemphasis of the following entry of the winds:




As you can see, the wind entry is marked forte. Totally predictably, Solti could never miss an opportunity to exaggerate the dynamics of the brass by turning forte into something more like double forte:



Notice, that you can just about hear only the brass, and you could be forgiven for thinking that there were no clarinets and oboes in there at all: they have be allowed be go completely missing, as though edited out by the conductor. Also what on earth is the point of that bombastic entry with the horns playing cuivre? Gone is the sense of celestial grandeur and the mystery of the moment.

In the following two bars after that opening forte cord dies away to pp, you get a crescendo rising up to forte followed by an immediate diminuendo. Once again, Solti cannot help himself and you get the brass entering more like double forte. Not only that but you hear a delayed entry from a section of the brass, so that you hear two climaxes - a double dose of brass harshness is better than one for Solti:



One bar later comes the crucial passage with the terrifyingly high chromatic string passage:

However, under Solti it is completely drained of any sense of absolute Angst, instead sounding a bizarrely saccharine melodrama:



Death and Terror seemed to be robbed of their sting, and replaced with a sweet and chirpy Schmaltz.

Solti has a reputation for being a conductor with boundless positive energy and enthusiasm, with a bad tendency to excel only in more extrovert, dramatic and overtly brassy passages. On the next page, a few bars of music later, in his brash enthusiasm he badly rushes the approach to the double forte climax:



Instead of entering with the flourish of string starting piano, he starts off mezzo forte and so by the the time he reaches the part marked forte, he already has the orchestra playing double forte. What Wagner really wants is for the orchestra to hold back on the climax by sustaining the forte for a couple of bars so that he can then punch the climax home double forte. Solti rushes the climax to double forte, thus ruining the effect of the climax being held back for a moment before punching the dramatic climax home:




 The end result is an impression of impatient rushing of dramatic climaxes. Too much enthusiasm and exuberance ruins things. It is fairly typical of this conductor's extrovert approach to this work, and this is certainly not by any means an isolated incident.

Within that last quotation, you may have noticed how brash and prominent the eight horns were. The part in question is here (notice the 8 Hörner in C that Wagner calls for to play in unison):



Instead of starting out the eight horns playing piano, Solti starts them out mezzo forte to forte. By the time the horns reach the clima marked molto crescendo, they are playing double forte (almost cuivre in their harshness) such that they upstage the strings:



Once again, the end result is that it sounds excessively brash and brassy with rushed build-ups to critical climaxes.

The extrovert brassiness mixed with saccarine Schmaltz in Solti's reading totally undermines the profoundly introspective philosophical, psychological and spiritual meaning of these passages. With it evaporates the darker, philosophical and introspective aspects of the Ring. Of course, those of you who think that the Ring is just an action block buster are never short changed. Yes, the extrovert brassy parts of Siegfried, like the forging scene, are tremendous. Yes, the Vienna Philharmonic render Solti's interpretation beautifully. Yes, Culshaw's sound engineering team produce an audiophile miracle for the ages. But for those of us who truly savour the extraordinary profundity of Wagner, an entire dimension is completely and irretrievably missing.

Naturally, some may criticise me for focussing on just an extremely short passage in a very long work. However, this passage recapitulates at the critical moment of Siegfried's death in Götterdämmerung. When this passage lacks that ultimate terror and pure Angst, the whole meaning of the Ring cycle evaporates with it. The end result is little more than a facile caricature of the work, utterly stripped of its philosophical, psychological and spiritual depth of meaning.

As for who get this passage right - most conductors and orchestras do at a remarkably good job. Only Solti miscalculates as seriously as this. For example Lothar Zagrosek with his Stuttgart Ring cycle (on Naxos) does immeasurably better, as does Günter Neuhold in his Baadische Staatskapelle Ring cycle, and Simone Young with the Hamburg Philharmonic. Takashi Asahina with the New Japan Philharmonic are quite extraordinary. Asher Fisch with the State Opera of South Australia is not all too bad either.

It is little surprising that you get opinions being voiced like that of Mark Berry saying that the Decca Culshaw Ring is "unlistenable for me on account of Solti".