Not before time Clemens Krauss’s Ring, which many, including myself, consider to be the most compelling and best-cast cycle, is available again; and in much- improved sound. Its super-budget price (albeit without notes, texts or translation) makes it a real bargain. Since reviewing its last incarnation almost 16 years ago, I have never lost faith in its values: a truthful, admirably paced, deeply felt traversal, performed by a real ensemble of singers working in dedicated fashion over a short span of time. Contrast this with the much-praised Solti set, recorded over almost a decade with an inconsistent cast. If you want the almost surrealistic splendours of the Decca recording, Solti’s is still the version to have. Here, instead of the unnatural sound of an over-inflated orchestra, you hear the work in a theatrical perspective and a live acoustic.

The earlier operas are dominated by Hans Hotter, singing Wotan at the peak of his achievement. As Andrew Porter reported in 1953 from Bayreuth, he had never heard Hotter sound better. He encompasses every aspect of the role – this God is by turns magisterial, angry, anguished, ironical, philosphical and deeply moving. Those epithets are characterised in the bass-baritone’s vast voice, command of dynamics and exposition of the text.

Besides him, as so often on stage, is Astrid Varnay’s vocally strong and varied, tireless, finely accented, concerned and finally tragic Brünnhilde. It is not as warm in tone as Flagstad’s nor as gleaming as Nilsson’s, but for sheer involvement Varnay’s only rival is the more vocally variable Hildegard Behrens. The closing scene of Walküre is as moving as you are ever likely to hear it, and her Immolation is as grand and eloquent as any. Like Hotter, she seems here to be in her prime.

In 1953, Wolfgang Windgassen was singing his first Siegfried. He, too, is in pristine form, especially in the poetry of Forest Murmurs, the buoyancy of the Götterdämmerung narration and heroic utterance of Siegfried’s death scene. In the earlier opera he is in fresh and consistent voice, so one can excuse a lapse of memory in the second forging song. Altogether his performance is fresher and more consistent than for Böhm or Solti. Neidlinger, the essential Alberich at that time (he appears in all three sets), has not been surpassed before or since – granite-like in tone, and so appropriately menacing, a real presence.

Ramon Vinay’s dark-hued Siegmund is a louring, erotic presence, in the manner of his Otello. He suggests passion and suffering in his finely shaped singing: his exchanges with Varnay in the Todesverkündigung have particular intensity. Regina Resnik’s somewhat ungainly Sieglinde is not in his class, though she finds unexpected reserves in her Act 3 outburst of ecstasy when she discovers she is pregnant with Siegfried.

Josef Greindl is an imposing Fafner, a dour, powerful Hunding and an implacable Hagen: for years at Bayreuth he was unsurpassed in these roles. Another great Wagnerian bass, Ludwig Weber, is an impassioned Fasolt. Erich Witte’s crafty, unexaggerated Loge, Paul Kuen’s nasty, brutish Mime, Ira Malaniuk’s firm, bossy Fricka and imploring Waltraute, Maria von Ilosvay’s grave, concerned Erda are all assets. It is a luxury indeed to have so fine a baritone as Hermann Uhde for Donner to add to his classic Gunther, and Gerhard Stolze makes a lyrical Froh. The Rhinemaidens are fine. Rita Streich is an ideally eager-voiced Woodbird, but neither Freia nor Gutrune is sung with any distinction.

Over all presides Krauss with a judicious blend of the dramatic and spiritual, and the rare gift of maintaining line and musical argument through even the slowest passages. Where physical energy or incandescence are of the essence, Krauss inspires his orchestra to provide them. There are one or two moments of imprecision and a couple of false entries where the singers are concerned. The side changes are unhappily abrupt. None of this detracts much from the set’s sense of a well-tutored, highly individual group of singers giving of their dedicated best.

Karl Böhm’s 1960s Bayreuth set, also available cheaply, has better, stereo sound and shares the dramatic impetus of the Krauss, but the casting – Nilsson’s sovereign Brünnhilde apart – isn’t as impressive. Furtwängler, at Rome and La Scala, offers a different sort of experience.

Krauss’s Parsifal is another memorable interpretation, on a par with though different from Knappertsbusch in 1951 (now on Naxos). Krauss’s reading is one of the quickest in the Bayreuth annals, but that very pace gives the piece a direct vigour and dramatic consistency not always heard in his coeval’s deeply considered, reverential reading. Krauss imparts a wonderful feeling for the particular texture and tempo needed for each scene, culminating in the cleansing, sustained ecstasy of the work’s close.

Four principals are common to both sets. Ludwig Weber, as Gurnemanz, sings with even more rotund tone and with increased involvement. George London repeats his anguished, strongly voiced Amfortas. Martha Mödl’s Kundry’s individually accented Kundry remains unique, although Waltraud Meier, in more recent performances, is almost her equal, and Uhde is unsurpassed as Klingsor. With Wind- gassen singing Siegfried, Vinay took over from him in the title part and gives a typically expressive performance. He, Mödl and Uhde make the whole of Act 2 as vivid as any. Greindl is a suitably sonorous Titurel. Throughout chorus and orchestra perform with dedication – try the Act 1 transformation and the succeeding choruses. Altogether this is a traversal of the score among the most satisfying on CD.