The drama of Die Walkure, as it unfolds between Siegmund's stormy entance and Wotan's sorrowful final exit, encompasses the essence of the mature Wagnerian style. Highly-charged lyricism and intense, often grandiose declamation generate forms of unprecedented scale and strength. The conductor's principal task is to achieve an effective balance, and a natural flow, between these contrasting elements, and the most controversial aspect of James Levine's interpretation lies in the way he seems to encourage his singers to play down the emphases and underlinings that are natural in the stage performance, while himself continuing to wring the maximum dramatic significance from the orchestral music. The recorded balance itself assists this effect, with a spaciou perspective in which the foreground is certainly not occupied by the singers.
Fortunately, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra are one of the stars of this performnace. The playing is always secure, but goes beyong more confidence into a gloriously exciting projection of the score's multifarious combinations of colours, nutured by Levine to produce a richness od detail unsurpassed in any other recording. Tempos are frequently on the leisurely side. It is clear from the turbulent opening of Act 1 that Levine, while encouraging strong accentuation, will not linger unduly when urgency is of the essence. Yet in Act 1 as a whole it is hard not to feel that there is too little energy in reserve to make the final stages the incandescent experience they can and should be. One reason for this is the attractively youthful but underprojected Siegmund of Gary Lakes. His narration in the middle of the act shows him to be capable of a truly Wagnerian breadth of phrase but the words go for too little, the undertone of sorrow and despair hardly apparent at all. Of course it is possible for a Siegmund to sound too effortful, as Ramon Vinay, for all his reserves of power, does in the Clemens Krauss 1953 Bayreuth cycle (Laudis / Music Discount Centre). Jon Vickers for Karajan (DG) is unsurpassed as a hero driven by forces he cannot comprehend, but he handles the text roughly. Apart from Peter Hofmann for Boulez (Philips—nla, but due for release soon on CDV), the most convincing all-round interpretations are those of Siegfried Jerusalem (Janowski / Eurodisc) and James King in Karl Bohm's 1967 Bayreuth cycle (Philips).
Anyone familiar with Jessye Norman's resplendent Sieglinde for Janowski will be curious to know how she reacts to a relatively puny Siegmund. There is some sense of sheer vocal power being held in check, and a touch of tonal harshness here and there, as if Norman is not always completely at one with Levine's tempos. ''Du bist der Lenz'' is broader than for Janowski, and less intense, though still very fine. This new set also has an excellent Hunding—comparatively restrained but lacking nothing in menace in Kurt Moll.
Act 2 introduces Levine's major asset, a Wotan in James Morris as vocally well-endowed as any since Hans Hotter in his prime. There is also the advantage of a seasoned Wagnerian as Fricka: Christa Ludwig sounds scarcely less fresh-voiced or forcefully involved than she did for Solti (Decca) in the mid 1960s. But it is the relationship between Wotan and Brunnhilde that is at the core of the drama, and the performances of James Morris and Hildegard Behrens that can expect the closest critical scrutiny. Morris encompasses the part with wellnigh majestic ease, and a tone at times even darker than Hotter's (for Krauss). Yet, like Gary Lakes in Act 1, though far less damagingly overall, he is in places prone to under-characterize in the interests of purely vocal refinement. At ''Gotternoth! Endloser Grimm!'' he sounds put out rather than shaken to his foundations, and the long narration flows along almost too effortlessly, never dull, but lacking that vivid engagement with the text achieved most notably by Hotter (Krauss) and Adam (Bohm).
In Hildegard Behrens Levine has a Brunnhilde of proven theatrical effectiveness who might well have created a more fully realized sense of character in a live performance. At the start of the Todesverkundigung (after a superbly controlled orchestral introduction) she is rather tremulous, but equal to the solemnity and the gradually increasing tension of the music. Even so, she does not provide the compelling legato that other Brunnhildes summon up in this scene, and the climax misses that quality of almost anarchic exuberance that Brunnhilde's decision to act for herself (and what she believes Wotan truly desires) should bring.
Levine's Act 3 is similar to its predecessors in that a strong, exciting opening leads to a conclusion without the truly crowning sense of fulfilment that, on record, has been most memorably captured by Bohm, Furtwangler (EMI—only available as a 14-LP set of the complete Ring—EX290670-3, 5 / 86) and Goodall (EMI—nla). The Ride is as brilliant as one could wish, and in the early stages Behrens's relatively light-voiced Brunnhilde is heard at its humanly vulnerable best. She is also most affecting at ''War es so schmahlich?''. A pity, then, that her last, desperate plea to Wotan—''Auf dein Gebot''—should lack an appropriately commanding rhetoric, and that she makes so protracted a pause before the final ''zu nah'n!'' This passage is one of the most thrilling moments in Dame Gwyneth Jones's recording (Boulez). Krauss's Varnay is also magnificent here, as throughout, while Birgit Nilsson for both Solti and Bohm, but especially in the live circumstances of the latter version, has a near-ideal balance of despair and exultation that is little muted by Bohm's at times almost brusque approach to tempo.
In his response to Brunnhilde's impassioned plea, Morris does as much as is humanly possible to counter the potential ponderousness of Levine's tempo, but even he has some difficulty in holding the line steady, the tone free of sentimentality, and achieving strength as well as eloquence in the great final affirmation. Adam—his Bohm account rather than the later Janowski—is lighter-voiced, but dramatically as convincing as any. It is a thousand pities that Hotter, whose Farewell in the Krauss set displays matchless expressiveness and grandeur, mistimes the final phrases, perhaps thrown by the conductor's unexpectedly slow tempo. (Even so, Krauss's Act 3 is, in sum, no less than ten minutes quicker than Levine's!)
After three quiet years a new wave of Ring recordings has begun, with Krauss, Levine—and Haitink in the offing. The different qualities of vintage and modern, live and studio performances, can only encourage a happy indecisiveness, not absolute preferences or single recommendations. In this new DG set, Morris's Wotan, and the playing of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, are undoubtedly special. For my taste, Levine and his artists give us too little of that sheer dramatic power and dynamic thrust without which even the work's lyricism is diminished, and I also prefer a balance that gives the voices, if not the entire sound-picture, greater immediacy. Yet I will be as eager as any to hear how the rest of the Levine cycle turns out.'