Like the first instalment of the Mariinsky Ring (Die Walküre, 5/13), this recording of Das Rheingold is the result of several separate sessions, one spread over four days in 2010, then three days in 2012. The booklet gives no further details, though the sustained freshness of the singers suggests that the process was more like that of the old-style studio recording than a series of complete concert performances. It might be to compensate for this that such
a vividly theatrical atmosphere is created; so much so that the absence of sound effects of the kind an actual staging would involve can seem positively surreal.

In Die Walküre, Mike Ashman noted that, as Wotan, René Pape ‘seems obsessed with remaining noble; he never sounds angry…or bitter’. In Das Rheingold Pape might well have quailed at the thought of appearing alongside three of the Mariinsky’s most formidable bass-baritones – four if Donner is included – and although his superbly well-sung performance is far from monotonously dignified, Pape wisely avoids the histrionic extremes of Nikolai Putilin’s Alberich. Putlin’s anguished outburst during the early stages of scene 4 is electrifying on first hearing but will probably pall on repetition; and Mime, too, is less plaintively downbeat than usual. But there are no weak links in this cast: Fricka, Loge, Fasolt and Fafner are all as good as any of the recently recorded rivals you might care to name, and enunciation of the German text is, with only occasional exceptions, appropriately idiomatic.

What Mike Ashman hears as ‘the decidedly un Western sound of Gergiev and his orchestra’ remains a feature here, and, as with Walküre, ‘a dramatic advantage to this opera’s tense underlay’, not just when the brass are given their head, but with some unusually vibrant string textures. Gergiev usually avoids the more extravagant reining-back of momentum in which he has indulged in the past, though the entry of the giants in scene 2 is exceptionally slow and as a result risks comical exaggeration. Nevertheless, the uniquely euphoric spirit of The Ring’s prelude emerges with irresistible conviction as the compelling drama unfolds.