Recorded in concert in Hong Kong at the beginning of this year, the second part of Jaap van Zweden’s Ring Cycle for Naxos easily maintains the high standard and promise of Das Rheingold, 12 months ago.
As before, the playing of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra provides the foundation of the performance, putting down its marker in a taut, intense account of the first-act prelude and maintaining its grip right through to the radiant account of the Magic Fire music with which Die Walküre ends. Van Zweden’s sense of pacing and drama never falters either, and some of the climaxes he engineers are thrillingly vivid – the orchestral depiction of Wotan’s rage as he seeks out Brünnhilde in the third act is as frightening as any on disc.
And once again, he has a first rate cast. The Siegmund and Sieglinde are Stuart Skelton and Heidi Melton, the Tristan and Isolde in ENO’s recent production.
Some may find Melton’s fast, tight vibrato intrusive at times, though her commitment and steely intensity are never to be doubted, and she really rises to the challenge of her final scene with Siegmund. Skelton is magnificent throughout, surely without a rival in the role today. He’s meltingly lyrical in the love duet, bringing a baritonal richness to some phrases, and sounds even more youthful and ardent alongside Falk Struckmann’s rather woolly, elderly sounding Hunding.
Matthias Goerne’s Wotan sometimes seems to be a performance in the making. There are phrases, in the Farewell especially, that are wonderfully gilded and coloured, while others seem gruff and peremptory, and moments in his long second-act confrontation with Fricka, who is very much a woman not to be denied as Michelle DeYoung presents her, when his sound becomes gravelly and introspective, as if he was singing into his metaphorical beard.
But Petra Lang’s Brünnhilde makes a formidable foil; as a former mezzo who has been born again as a dramatic soprano, she makes the most of her striking lower register, especially in the annunciation of death scene with Skelton in the second act, even though that part of her voice does not always connect smoothly with the higher registers. Overall, the performances become much more than the sum of their parts, some of which are outstanding anyway.
