This will be a fairly quick post. I mentioned a few days ago that I really loved classical music... but not opera. Nonetheless, some of Wagner's operas have the best symphonic orchestral music to them that exists in the entire world of symphonic orchestral music. For many decades (at least) there has been demand for someone to go take the 18 hour or so performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen opera and turn it into a shorter orchestral kind of thing, and I've seen many, many extracts and selections without vocals over the years, including many that were recorded before I was born (and I turn 50 next year.) Heck, the first "extracts" arrangements were done during Wagner's lifetime and with his blessing. However, the notion of a "potted Ring" as it's sometimes called, where the selections are actually placed in order and attempt to tell the story of the Ring, somewhat, is a newer phenomena, the earliest arrangement being done in the late 80s, and the other three considerably more recently than even that.
I'm going to try and very succinctly and quickly talk about the merits of each arrangement (or at least of the performance and recording that I have of it). Some of them are still easily obtained on CD, all of them are easily obtained on mp3 from Amazon. I'll include the links to each as I discuss it.
4. The de Vlieger arrangement ("An Orchestral Adventure") performed by the Baltic Sea Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Kristjan Järvi.
Now, let me state first off that I like all of these recordings and I like all of these arrangements, but there has to be an order to them somehow, and of the four, this is my least favorite. It's also the shortest, which means that it is the "harshest" arrangement in terms of how much was cut, which is part of it, although the speed at which the performance happens is partly visible in that run-time as well. Occasionally, it feels too fast, especially in the earliest Rheingold section.
I also have to point out that it's the recording I've had the least amount of time to digest. Buying it, as I did, as mp3, meant that getting gapless playback between the sections is maybe a bit harder, and the tracks do run together. I tried to fix that somewhat by opening the mp3s in Audacity, zooming in as much as I could, and trimming the beginning and end silences that buffer each track, sometimes even combining tracks to go for the smoother transition. This isn't a perfect solution, but it mostly works. However, for whatever reason the de Vlieger arrangements are much easier to find, so I could have gotten this on CD (and I may yet) so that I can get that gapless playback more easily.
It's also worth pointing out that in addition to Kristjan Järvi's recording with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic, there are three other performances of this that you can get. For whatever reason, this arrangement is the easiest to find in mulitple varieties. I don't know anything about the other three versions other than that they're out there, and that their run-times tend to be a little bit longer than this one, in spite of being the exact same arrangement. I've also heard some who are more intimate with the actual full-length opera (or operas; let's be real; if it takes four nights for the full performance, it's four linked operas in one) say that it follows the story of the Ring better than the similar-length Maazel arrangement. I can't entirely comment on that, not having ever heard nor desired to hear the entire opera—nor being able to follow the specifics of the story if I did, since I don't speak German. I felt that it was rushed, even so, especially in the beginning. It's a good arrangement, but if you can swing it, I recommend others.
I should note that because this is the one that's the least familiar to me, it may be partly why it's down so low. I like the longer ones, because they're longer and have more of the music, and I like the Maazel one because I know it better, have had it longer, am more familiar with it, and therefore it sounds more "right" to me. This may not be fair to the de Vlieger arrangement, which those familiar with the full opera often suggest is a better arrangement than even the Maazel one. And de Vlieger did "potted" versions of three other Wagner operas: Parsifal, Tannhäuser and Tristan & Isolde. They seem to be well done too, although I have little to compare them to other than the overtures and a handful of other selections I've heard here and there.
3. The Tarkmann arrangement ("The Ring—symphonic") performed by the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, conducted by Daniel Klajner.
This one is a two-disc arrangement, and therefore adds a good 50% more music than the de Vlieger or Maazel arrangements, and the half hour or so of new music that it adds compared to those is not necessarily the same half hour as the other longer Dressler arrangement adds. For this reason, I find it a better choice than the de Vlieger one, but it's a close call in many ways. I like that each of the four constituent parts of the opera are divided up into separate chunks, which eases gapless playback. However, if doesn't necessarily sound as gapless, because the "cuts" aren't often handled very deftly, and sometimes you're jumping from one piece of the opera to another, and it's altogether too obvious that you're jumping. I'd rather have a natural end and then a gap then a gapless yet clunky transition, which I do feel like we get a bit with this one.
I also feel like the arrangement itself is maybe just a bit flat sometimes. I think, although I haven't really done a careful side by side (by side by side) listen-through of all four arrangements, that there is some vital big moment somewhere that's missing... but I can't quite put my finger on it.
I believe that there's another performance of this out there somewhere, although this is the one that seems easiest to get. It is also available as a double CD or SACD, as well as digital mp3 download, as you can see if you follow the link.
2. The Maazel arrangement ("The 'Ring' Without Words") performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Lorin Maazel
This is the first such orchestral Ring synthesis made, and Maazel, the arranger, conducted it as well with his normal orchestra, at the label's suggestion, I believe. Telarc, the label, is rather well-known for their magnificent sound quality, and that's one of the top draws to this. To me, it's the first Ring distillation that I heard, and therefore feels more "right" to me, as mentioned above. The Dressler version feels like an extended director's cut of the Maazel version; those who complain that the narrative is a bit choppier in favor of the moods in Maazel's version will usually admit that Dressler reinstates the narrative flow while taking nothing away from the Maazel version, while the de Vlieger and Tarkmann versions are simply different interpretations of the full opera altogether. Granted, nobody is likely to leave out the really well-known pieces that have been sampled, arranged for orchestra (instead of opera) and recorded as disconnected sections going all the way back to Hermann Zumpe's version which was done in Wagner's lifetime. Those parts are well enough known that no Ring distillation that fails to include them will sound like a Ring distillation to most people. This includes some of the Rhinemaidens stuff from the Das Rheingold section, the Ride of the Valkyries of course, and the Magic Fire Music theme from the Die Walküre section, maybe the Forest Murmers from the Siegfried section, and fairly large chunks of the Götterdämmerung section. Once all of those sections are included, you're a good two-thirds to three-fourths of the way done with a CD-sized (60-70 minute) synthesis, leaving you little time to play with bridging elements or other portions that you want to highlight.
I freely admit that my preference for this arrangement over the de Vlieger arrangement may not last as I become more familiar with the latter. It may; the foreshortened Rhine music of de Vlieger was an immediate turn-off to me because I was used to the longer version that both the Dressler and Maazel versions use, but what can you say? No matter what you do, there are going to be drastic cuts in synthesizing 18 hours or so of operatic music to about an hour or even an hour and a half of orchestral music.
1. The Dressler arrangement ("Der Symphonische Ring") performed by the Duisburger Philharmoniker, conducted by Jonathan Darlington
The CD version of this is prohibitively hard to find, so it's nice that Amazon offers us an mp3 alternative. I feel like I've made enough references to this one as I've gone through the others that there's little to say now that I get to it that I haven't already said. The Maazel is the first, the de Vlieger and Tarkmann interpretations go in slightly different directions, but the Dressler version sounds like an extended director's cut of the Maazel arrangement. Regardless of how you feel about the pacing of the Lord of the Rings movies, once you watch and own the extended versions, are you really going to go back and see the theatrical ones again?
Although I'm ranking them as if they had the same opportunity to reach the top spot, which isn't really true. In addition to having a first-come familiarity bias for the Maazel version that transfers to the Dressler, I also prefer the longer ones without as much stuff cut. Regardless of any other quality considerations, the Dressler was bound to be the one that floated to the top as my preferred version, if I had to have just one.
Which, admittedly, I don't. I have all four of these. I know I can listen to, on YouTube music, although I haven't done so yet, two other recordings of the de Vlieger arrangement. The ability to have more than one interpretation is perfect. Ideally, I'd create a greatest hits Frankenstein, taking Dressler as the starting point, maybe, and adding themes from the Tarkmann version that the Dressler doesn't have, for instance. But that may be more work than I'm willing to spend on figuring out what to use and where to put it; especially considering that the Dressler version flows largely together with few cuts, because Dressler created brief bridges to make the sections flow together. More likely, I'll just listen to all of the versions from time to time and enjoy the differences.
1 comment:
Minor correction. The Tannhäuser fix-up I have is a Maazel arrangement, not a de Vlieger arrangement.
Post a Comment