Today Chris’s Cache goes back three years to a broadcast of the conductor’s Das Rheingold concert performance in Amsterdam.

Although Nagano’s Ring seems to be the first complete cycle performed on period-instruments, for the past several decades there have been other attempts to get to the “authentic” Wagner.

Bruno Weil released Der Fliegende Holländer with the Capella Coloniensis on Deutsche Harmonic Mundi in 2005, a year after Simon Rattle conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Rheingold at the BBC Proms and Baden-Baden where it was filmed.

Rattle went on to do the Ring at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, but with his Berlin Philharmonic.

Years would pass before Thomas Hengelbrock tackled Parsifal with his Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble in Madrid and Dortmund.

Marc Minkowski has led his Les Musiciens du Louvre in both Die Feen and Holländer, while Christoph Roussetconducts his Les Talens Lyriques on In the Shadows, Michael Spyres’s latest CD, which features a moving prayer from Rienzi.

I have read some comments that Nagano isn’t the right man for the job as he’s a relative newcomer to historically-informed performance practice. What do die-hard Wagnerians think of these increasingly comprehensive ventures into HIP Wagner?

Wagner: Das Rheingold

Fricka: Stefanie Irányi
Freia: Sarah Wegener
Erda: Gerhild Romberger
Woglinde: Ania Vegry
Wellgunde: Ida Aldrian
Flosshilde: Eva Vogel
Wotan: Derek Welton
Loge: Thomas Mohr
Alberich: Daniel Schmutzhard
Donner: Johannes Kammler
Froh: Tansel Akzeybek
Mime: Thomas Ebenstein
Fasolt: Tijl Faveyts
Fafner: Christoph Seidl

Concerto Köln
Kent Nagano
Concertgebouw Amsterdam
20 November 2021
Broadcast

Rheingold can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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