I suspect that, to an even greater extent than his award-winning Götterdämmerung (7/10), the second instalment of Sir Mark Elder’s Hallé Ring cycle will divide critical opinion. The fruit of the conductor’s long experience of Wagner, and with the benefit of orchestral playing strong in discipline and powerful in eloquence, this performance is as coherent and consistent as any of the many other fine recordings currently on offer. Even a listener who finds the main tempo of the final scene too slow, generating more sentimentality than solemnity, is likely to be struck by the unusual restraint of the orchestral playing as Wotan lays Brünnhilde to rest, and by the remarkable range of moods, between gentle quietness and heroic incisiveness, summoned up by the Latvian bass-baritone Egils Silins.

Silins’s achievement is the more spectacular since it was apparently thought until shortly before Act 2 began that indisposition might prevent him from completing the performance. With Yvonne Howard a late substitute for the planned Sieglinde, this was clearly one of those Wagner events in which the resolve of all concerned was tested to the utmost, and the fact that the recording includes takes from rehearsals as well as from the actual performances doubtless reflects this. Like Susan Bullock (Brünnhilde), Howard might have sounded less edgily vibrant in a less closely focused acoustic. Neither singer seems entirely at ease with the German text, yet they are both as dramatically engaged as they would be on stage, and Bullock’s final plea to Wotan is as thrilling as with most if not all of her recorded rivals. Susan Bickley also makes as much as possible of Fricka’s starchy tirades in Act 2.

Elder’s preference for relatively broad tempi is clear from early in Act 1; parts of Siegmund’s monologue, as well as ‘Winterstürme’, could well be judged lethargic, though Stig Andersen is alert and characterful throughout, without excessive emoting, and Clive Bayley is an imposingly black-voiced Hunding. With fewer issues concerning tempo, Act 2 contributes greatly to the accumulating dramatic tension and to confirming the overall conviction of Elder’s approach. Perhaps the most important point is that, in a crowded field, Elder has a cast, as well as an interpretative stance, that ensure a distinctive as well as a memorable experience. However well you think you know Die Walküre, this recording should leave you in renewed awe at Wagner’s genius – not a bad thing as his bicentenary approaches.