I was very taken with the Walküre from this same source, praising in particular the conducting of Simone Young. Again here, in the Cycle’s final installment, Young is impressive, but there are moments that do not work: the Rhine Journey and Funeral Music are played far too quickly, particularly the latter. But her sense of dynamics, her feel for the one-on-one moments versus the crowd scenes, the tender versus the violent, seem to me to be ideal. The Waltraute/Brünnhilde scene is the most humanly interactive I’ve ever heard, and the summoning of the Vassals, with the Hamburg Chorus at its best, is as rousing as anyone might want. And if Young doesn’t quite reach the heights and depths of feeling that she does in Walküre, this is still a reading to be proud of.
The singing is variable. Christian Franz probably was impressive live, but on disc you can hear the effort that is going into his singing of Siegfried in the ferocious moments of Act 2. His lyrical singing can be appealing, but his is not a Siegfried for the ages. The same might be said for the Brünnhilde of Deborah Polaski, but in her case it is about a diminishing of resources. She is more than 60 years old and the vibrato has loosened a bit; with it, there is a loss of power. The Immolation Scene is as fine as most, particularly in the resigned, quiet moments, but again her outrage at the close of the first act and throughout the second comes across as less than heroic.
John Tomlinson, also moving on in years, still makes a scary Hagen, perhaps not in the gigantic Gottlob Frick sense of the role, but in nuanced nastiness to be sure. Robert Bork’s Gunther is a bit of a vulgarian, but that’s fine; Anna Gabler’s Gutrune is appealingly desperate. Petra Lang’s Waltraute is excellent, as is Wolfgang Koch’s Alberich. The sonics are superb. Pictures of Claus Guth’s production in the accompanying booklet make you grateful for a lack of video presentation. Stick with Keilberth’s 1955 performance on Testament.
