As a feat of engineering, this disc is something of a showpiece. Decca’s sound is quite spectacular, whether in terms of aural perspective, spatial information, tonal bloom or an extraordinarily wide dynamic curve – most especially in Siegfried’s Funeral March from Gotterdammerung, where Wagner’s fist-shaking climaxes erupt with maximum force. Chailly’s interpretative strength lies not so much in the way he projects the climaxes themselves as in his handling of the passages in between, which are kept low in volume but high in voltage. He charts the music well, chooses his tempos with care and, characteristically, displays a sensitive ear for texture. The Dawn sequence is nicely built but although the Rhine Journey is sumptuously panoramic (and note the telling low strings-and-brass counterpoint from, say, 8'22''), I missed something of the bite, precision and hungry excitement that others (Toscanini most notably, especially live in 1941 – RCA, 11/92) bring to the music. Incidentally, here – as in the Walkure and Lohengrin excerpts – Chailly opts for familiar concert endings.
The Ride of the Valkyries is similarly wide-screen, with much attention to detail, but in this instance volume doesn’t so much support voltage as replace it. The Meistersinger Prelude is beautifully drawn, with a fine show of brass for the home straight; and while Chailly wanders among the Venusberg highlighting this or that salient detail, he somehow misses out on the music’s animal vigour, its sense of physical abandonment.
It all sounds splendid – though whether the combination of Chailly’s sensitive phrase-shaping, the Royal Concertgebouw’s virtuosity and Decca’s remarkable engineering quite compensates for lack of adrenalin is a matter for individual readers to decide. DSG’s booklet-notes are extraordinarily perceptive.'