Comfortably recorded with a natural pit/stage balance – as were its predecessors in Hamburg’s unfolding live Ring (8/09, 3/10) – Young’s new Siegfried favours chamber-like clarity and colour over brute strength and decibels. Her pointing of Hauptstimmen, fresh phrasing of familiar motifs and pacing of the narrative are sharp and convincing. Preludes and interludes, often painted by the conductor with an ear sensitive to their radical textures, show her instrumentalists to be imaginative soloists. Orchestrally, this is a richly evoked musical journey from the fairy-tale forest of Siegfried’s youth to his more epic meetings with gods and women, free of pantomimic exaggeration.

As in Hamburg’s Das Rheingold, both Mime and Alberich have a tendency to cross from singing to shouting to gain extra impact at climaxes. It is always dramatically motivated – and was doubtless wholly a piece with Claus Guth’s staging – but makes for stressful repeated listening on disc. Christian Franz’s Siegfried is also prone to some shouting and crooning. But he is attentive to opportunities for quiet singing and textual colour, and paces himself to sound convincingly ardent opposite his Brünnhilde in Act 3. That Brünnhilde, the English soprano Catherine Foster, is, in her second recording of the role, a spirited, imaginative interpreter, challenged but never overcome by the high tessitura. Deborah Humble is a serious, involved Erda. Finally there is Falk Struckmann’s Wanderer, who makes perhaps the most complete use of his conductor’s dynamic range to deliver a sung-through (as opposed to declaimed) Wotan of Lieder-like detail and care, his finest performance of the role yet recorded.

Oehms’s new set stands up well alongside modern recordings, better cast overall than either the Thielemann Bayreuth CD set (Opus Arte, 1/10) or the Fura dels Baus Valencia DVD (C major, 6/10). The recent Michael Schønwandt DVD (Decca, 4/09) and the vintage Clemens Krauss (Orfeo), Joseph Keilberth (Testament, 3/06), Rudolf Kempe (Testament, 8/08) and Furtwängler (EMI, 2/91) sets are compellingly cast and conducted.