The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure (arr. Henk de Vlieger)

Program notes

About the Work

Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (‘The Ring of the Nibelung’) is the most colossal achievement in all opera: a cycle of four music-dramas (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung) that runs to some fifteen hours and took Wagner about a quarter of a century to compose. It tells a vast mythological saga of gods, giants, dwarves, dragons, heroes and river-maidens, all turning on a cursed ring of power forged from stolen Rhinegold, and building to the cataclysmic destruction of the gods’ fortress, Valhalla. Its music is among the most revolutionary and influential ever written, built from a web of recurring leitmotifs (short musical themes attached to characters, objects and ideas) and orchestrated with unprecedented richness and power.

Because so much of the Ring’s dramatic and emotional weight is carried by the orchestra, the cycle is a natural quarry for orchestral excerpts, and many conductors have assembled their own ‘Ring without words.’ This one, by the Dutch percussionist and composer Henk de Vlieger (created in 1991), is among the finest and most comprehensive, a continuous, roughly hour-long symphonic synthesis that threads together the cycle’s greatest orchestral passages, from the primordial murmur of the Rhine at the very opening, through the Ride of the Valkyries, the Magic Fire Music, Forest Murmurs and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, to Siegfried’s Funeral March and the overwhelming Immolation that ends the world. De Vlieger arranges them so skilfully that the result plays almost as a single tone-poem, tracing the whole arc of the drama in purely orchestral terms. It is a thrilling, immersive way to experience the essence of the Ring in one sitting.

What to Listen For

Listen, right at the start, for one of the most famous openings in music: the deep, slowly stirring E-flat that emerges from silence and gradually builds into the rippling, surging music of the river Rhine, the primal source from which the whole cycle (and arguably the whole arrangement) grows. From there, follow the procession of great set-pieces and let the leitmotifs guide you: short, recognisable themes for the gold, the ring, the sword, the gods, the hero Siegfried, and so on, which recur and transform throughout.

Listen for the showstoppers everyone knows: the galloping, brass-blazing Ride of the Valkyries; the shimmering, flickering Magic Fire Music as Wotan surrounds the sleeping Brünnhilde with flame; the gentle, woodwind-rich Forest Murmurs; and the exhilarating sweep of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. Then listen for the tragic grandeur of the second half: the shattering, brass-laden Siegfried’s Funeral March, and the vast, cathartic final scene, Brünnhilde’s Immolation, in which the music gathers up the cycle’s great themes and drives, through fire and flood, to a transcendent close as Valhalla burns and the ring returns to the Rhine. Even without voices, the orchestra tells the whole epic story; surrender to its tremendous sweep and colour.