The ‘Ring’ of the Netherlands: A new Dutch cycle is evaluated by Arnold Whittall

These discs testify to the survival of optimism within the record industry. Soon after the DVD release of the Amsterdam Ring, filmed in 1999 and reviewed in The Wagner Journal i/1 by Katherine R. Syer, comes a CD-only version of the same production taken mainly from performances given six years later in September 2005: Scenes 1 and 3 of Siegfried Act II were recorded in August–September 2004, and Act II, Scene 1 of Götterdämmerung in February 2005.

Why bother? The primary impulse, as the packaging declares, is that this is the ‘first recording according to the Neue Richard-Wagner-Ausgabe’.