Dresden Festival Orchestra | Concerto Köln | Kent Nagano | Wagner

You’ve never heard Wagner like this before! Kent Nagano, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, and Concerto Köln have been presenting the complete Ring Cycle at Lucerne Festival since 2023, one opera at a time, summer after summer, in historically informed performances. They have been advised by a renowned team of scholars so that the tetralogy will sound like Wagner himself may once have heard it. The string instruments play on gut strings, while the wind instruments were rebuilt according to the historical models. The orchestra’s tuning is lower than usual, and the tempi are faster. But above all, the sound is wonderfully transparent and clear, and the singers do not have to bark out in a constant fortissimo. Instead, they also resort to declamation, i.e., they sing using a recitative-like speech song. Christian Wildhagen spoke of a “deep cleansing” in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and called the performance of Die Walküre a “milestone that even makes up for the lack of a production.” Now it’s on to Siegfried, the “comedy” among the four Ring operas. And on to a new, gripping listening adventure.