It’s often argued that what makes Wagner’s music dramas special – and significantly “un-operatic” – is that dialogues between characters matter more than extended passages of solo vocal display. Add to that the central role of Wagner’s “art of transition”, which involves not just getting smoothly from one section to the next but contrasting passages for voices and orchestra with purely orchestral sections, and you have compelling reasons for regarding the kind of voiceless digests indulged in by Henk de Vlieger as profoundly misconceived.

When Wagner’s works were new, transcriptions and excerpting of all kinds were valid ways of getting a hearing, until such time as stage performances became frequent and the emergence of recording meant that “accessing the originals” was no longer a problem. In the 21st century we are nothing if not spoilt for choice, and for some devoted Wagnerians domestic listening has replaced the inevitable hazards of live performance as the medium of choice. While there is a case for such creative commentaries on Wagner’s originals as Robin Holloway’s Wagner Nights or Christopher Rouse’s Der gerettete Alberich, de Vlieger is more arranger than composer. The best he can do by way of imaginative reshaping is to abandon chronology, so that the music accompanying Parsifal’s entrance in Act 2 precedes the Grail Knights’ music from Act 1, simply to provide a faster interlude between two slow episodes.

Extracted and juxtaposed at such length, the results in all three cases seem little more than eccentrically reverent caricatures, a set of feverishly hyped-up compilations completely lacking in the wit and economy of actual Wagner parodies by Chabrier and Messager. The experience is not improved by exaggeratedly “expressive” orchestral playing as Edo de Waart strives to produce an experience no less meaningful than the real thing, and by a remastering of the 1990s originals which often sounds coarse and poorly balanced. If you find it revelatory to have Die Walküre’s Magic Fire Music and Siegfried’s Forest Murmurs stuck end to end simply because both happen to be in the same key, this could be for you. Otherwise, buyer beware.