Wagner with a Russian Accent: David Breckbill questions the coherence of the Mariinsky ‘Rheingold’

Review of Das Rheingold, conducted Gergiev, St Petersburg, 2010 and 2012 (Mariinsky, 2 SACDs).

March 2014, Volume 8, Number 1, 92–3.

My first five hearings of Valery Gergiev’s recording of Das Rheingold left me unhappy and dissatisfied. I cannot honestly describe this performance as a convincing reading of the work; perhaps because it was recorded over a period spanning nearly two years, it does not flow well. Some passages come brilliantly to life (the entrance of Froh and Donner is electrifying), but more often there are longueurs or palpable applications of calculation – for example, the unusually steady and brisk tempo for the gods’ entrance into Valhalla may well be the conductor’s way of suggesting hollow pomp in purely musical terms (Wagner’s own verbal encouragement at the 1876 Ring rehearsals for this passage to flow rather than drag might be adduced as further justification for such an approach), but the results here seem rigid and lightweight, thereby lacking a sense of inevitable culmination.