Michael Tanner

Is this the best Ring ever?

The first complete performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Proms is already, less than a week after its conclusion, being hailed as historic and will soon be mythic, an appropriate status and designation for this amazing and amazingly great work. Even Radio 3 ‘presenters’ who have music degrees but have always quailed at the thought of anything so daunting have breathlessly confessed that it was among the very greatest musical experiences of their lives. Some of us have been saying that for quite a time, without making much impression other than that we are the members of a weird and even sinister cult. Still, better late than never. Before I go into any detail about what was without a doubt one of the greatest Ring cycles I have ever experienced, I’d like to speculate on why it was this particular performance, or four performances, have had such an impact.

Partly it is that people will go to hear something at the Proms that they wouldn’t go to anywhere else, and that in turn is partly thanks to the cheapness of promming, but also, and probably more, to the sheer mystique of togetherness, perhaps like being a passionate attender at a soccer match without any opponents. There is an anti- or inverted snobbishness about the Proms which there isn’t about any other classical music events. And Prommers do love huge works, appropriate to the monstrous building they are performed in, hence enthusiasm for such white elephants as Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Nothing is as big as the Ring, so though that doesn’t seem to be enough to get people to buy CDs or DVDs of it in large numbers, it was enough to lure capacity audiences into enduring gross discomfort, astronomical temperatures and severe disruption to their daily routines.

After wavering, I decided to listen in the coolish comfort of home, with a decent tuner and speakers conveying to me a great deal more musical ‘information’ than would have been likely in the Royal Albert Hall.

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