The Turning Point of die Walküre: O hehrstes Wunder!

For all of its brevity, this is one of the most revelatory moments in the whole of the Ring cycle. Here is the passage in question from the score:

In this brief moment of the whole length of die Walküre, Sieglinde realises that she is carrying Siegmund's child. As often in Wagner, this moment of redemption - the moment Sieglinde fulfils her destiny - comes just after Sieglinde has resigned herself to Death. She pleads to Brünnhilde to let her die and join Siegmund in death, but instead Brünnhilde reveals to her, her final allotted destiny as the mother of the hero Siegfried. This is the turning point of die Walküre from its depth of despair to the glimmer of a hope for salvation. Above all it marks the triumphant introduction of the Redemption through Love Leitmotiv, a theme that will only be fully explored at the end of Götterdämmerung.

This is Sieglinde's reply:

O hehrstes Wunder! Herrliches Maid! 

Oh noblest miracle! Glorious maiden!

There is a passionate eruption in open strings from the orchestra that goes with this. Here is Boulez conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra in the 1976 Centennial Ring Cycle:




The more fluid tempo confers tremendously impassioned expressive urgency. Unfortunately, too many conductors tranquillise this music with the mistaken notion that Wagner should be played with the sort of dragging, allegedly "Germanic", tempi of the sort he complained about all his life. I presume that these sorts of tempi go hand in hand with the groundless stereotypes about Wagner's music being harsh, brassy and heavy Prussian militaristic pomp. Which is to say, grotesque negative stereotypes about Wagner are perpetuated not only in word, but in interpretations of his music as well.

This is a typical example:



It is Solti in his Vienna Philharmonic recording for Decca.

As usual, Solti rather harshly plays up the brass parts, forcing the brass to be the principle conveyer of ideas to the point that they upstage the strings. However, where it is clear that the strings section of the orchestra predominates he goes straight to sleep around the words "O hehrstes Wunder". Unless there is a brass brass part to bombastically exaggerate, Solti seems to abandon all interest.  The feeling of a sudden revelation coming over Sieglinde is killed by the dragging tempo, along with a disinterested string statement.  The impact of this pivotal turning point in this work, the sudden transformation from total despair to sudden hope, is totally lost. So it is Solti - not Boulez - who gets to wear the Ice Man moniker here.

I find the hype around the Solti Ring most strange. When you actually examine it to see if the hype has any substance, you all too often come up empty. A number of other recordings of the Ring do extremely well at this critical juncture. Karl Böhm is magnificent with a faster tempo giving this moment its rightful expressive urgency:



The fluid tempo conveys tumultuously heated passion and a gushing feeling of sudden revelation. Note how noble and passionate the beautiful brass statement at the opening is - the moment does not call for a martial harshness in the brass at all. Why Solti would force the Vienna brass to play like that is beyond all comprehension.

Nor am I in any way unique in expressing these sentiments about Solti. Here is Wagner scholar, Erling E. Guldbrandsen, professor at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, saying much the same thing:

Over the years, I have realised how much of Solti’s conducting leans towards bombast, and how much his rendering of musical violence and brutal brass is unecessary and even misleading in Wagner

Janowski likewise, to his immense credit, refuses to fashionably drag through things, and thus confers the rightful impact to this moment of revelation.  The same thing can be said of Keilberth, 1952, and Swarowsky. Clemens Krauss is a touch slower, but still not dragging. Even the usually more expansive Kempe maintains a wonferful expressive urgency here.

Of the composers who insist on the modern (increasingly common in the post-war era) tendency towards slow tempi, Knappertsbusch in 1956 and 1957 seems to manage to salvage at least a part of the urgency and impact of this moment at a slow tempo, but something is lost. Furtwängler is somewhat more successful in all of his recordings from 1937 (Covent Garden), 1949 (La Scala), 1953 (Rome) and 1954 (Vienna). This comes from his 1937 Covent Garden Ring cycle:



Even then some of the white hot passion in the Boulez, Böhm, Janowski, Keilberth and Swarowsky feels like it has had ice cold water poured over it. The results may be nobler, but it is definitely icier and more aloof for it. Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic also takes this at a similar tempo but the emphasis is on a rapturously gorgeous string tone. For all of its spellbinding manicured glossiness, and the undoubted allure of its remarkable sumptuousness, the result is a far icier glacial beauty than even Furtwängler's. Of modern recordings, Mehta comes closest to  to Furtwängler, followed closely by Neuhold, Baremboim and Levine.

While this discussion of just a page or two from this work may seem to focus on an exceedingly short passage out of a vastly larger opus, you will find summarised in it the essence of each conductor's approach to the Ring as a whole. Only Bernhard Haitink is much better as a whole than his approach to this passage reveals, which is uncharacteristically dragging and lacking in impassioned sustained string legato.