In July 1999 Arte Nova recorded the Tirol Festival production of Wagner’s Siegfried (8/00)‚ and this Götterdämmerung derives from two Festival performances in July 2000. The Canadian tenor Alan Woodrow appears on both sets‚ and his Siegfried remains admirable in its clear projection and dramatic engagement. He manages a spectacularly sustained high C when greeting the vassals (Act 3)‚ and brings formidable intensity to his death scene. That he also sounds forced‚ even harassed in places can be explained not so much by dramatic realism as by the recording’s principal drawback‚ the hectic tempos set by the conductor. As Pierre Boulez for one has shown‚ fast Wagner can work perfectly well if all aspects of the dramatic rhetoric are to scale. His Bayreuth Götterdämmerung only lasts about six minutes longer overall than Gustav Kuhn’s‚ so the difference is more a matter of style than of speed. In far too many places Kuhn resorts to an over­heated‚ over­accented urgency‚ and risks creating the very coarseness that anti­Wagnerians attribute to the works themselves‚ rather than to a way of performing those works. Among the more obvious instances of this are the Prelude’s exchanges between Brünnhilde and Siegfried‚ the bulk of Act 2’s confrontations and conspiracies‚ the Funeral Music (as near to a quick­march version as you are likely to hear) and the entire closing scene. Worse still is the inclination to press the tempo forward in passages where an element of repose is vital for the music’s true profundity and humanity to be heard – Waltraute’s account of Wotan’s despair‚ for example. Kuhn’s basic efficiency in coordinating voices and instruments is not in doubt‚ and very little goes seriously wrong in ensemble‚ though stage clatter can be distracting in quieter moments. The best passages‚ where lyric warmth is not compromised‚ include the first part of the Prelude and the first scenes of Acts 2 and 3‚ with good trios of Norns and Rhinedaughters‚ and Duccio dal Monte’s incisive Hagen at its most imposing. Of the principal singers‚ it is Eva Silberbauer as Brünnhilde who seems most in need of Kuhn’s fast tempos in order to survive the part’s demands. She makes something of Brünnhilde’s capacity for impetuosity and vengefulness‚ but the complementary nobility and gravity are in short supply. With vibrant yet ringing high notes and a much smokier lower register‚ there are echoes of Martha Mödl in Silberbauer’s vocal style. Yet in this interpretation she has virtually no opportunity to explore the visionary tenderness which transforms Brünnhilde in the closing scene. Despite the sterling efforts of Woodrow and dal Monte‚ then‚ this set is in a much lower class than the other recent free­standing Götterdämmerung‚ the 1951 Bayreuth performance under Hans Knappertsbusch on Testament. There you have four full­price CDs of a mono‚ analogue recording‚ as opposed to Arte Nova’s special­price digital discs. But the Arte Nova set never establishes a really effective balance between orchestra and stage‚ imposes an irritating fade out at the end of the Prelude where a simple break is perfectly feasible‚ and provides a German­only text with many printing mistakes. Only the most dedicated completists‚ or those seeking a souvenir of a production about which the booklet tells us nothing‚ are likely to be happy with it.