The remastered SACD release of Siegfried from the Solti Ring cycle is now out. There’s only so much I can add to my reviews of Die Walküre and of the sampler disk of the whole cycle. Overall observations about the technical side of the record remain valid and the Vienna Philharmonic is again fabulous. The packaging is as with Die Walküre… luxurious.
The singing is also very fine and I didn’t have any reservations about anyone sounding “dated”. Hotter and Nilsson are again fantastic and Wolfgang Windgassen’s Siegfried combines beauty and power in full measure. Gustav Neidlinger and Kurt Böhme are back as Alberich and Fafner to good effect. Gerhard Stolze is effective (and not too affected) as Mime and there’s the famous cameo as the Woodbird by Joan Sutherland. Solti’s conducting is once again thrilling. He’s not afraid to take things at pace but can also be intensely dramatic and lyrical; sometimes at the same time. Culshaw’s “soundstage” effects come off really well, especially in the Fafner’s lair scene. This is another impressive instalment in an impressive project.
The version I listened to is the the four SACD disk release. It’s also available (for roughly the price of a Nibelung’s horde) as five vinyl LPs or much, much cheaper digitally in formats ranging from MP3 to 192kHz/24 bit FLAC which I suspect will be very good but not quite up to SACD quality.
Catalogue number: Decca 4853161
I have now had a chance to listen to the new SACD release of the 1965 Solti recording of Wagner’s Die Walküre. (For some reason Das Rheingold hasn’t arrived yet). I’m not going to do a detailed review of the performance since pretty much everything that could be said about it has been, and by people better qualified than me. As you might expect for a recording twice voted “recording of the century”. I’ve also already written about the technical details of the new transfer in 
Georg Solti’s recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle made between 1958 and 1966 has probably had more words written about it than any other classical recording. They are perhaps best. summed up by Gramophone Magazines comment that it is “The greatest of all the achievements in the history of the gramophone record”. It’s an amzing cast that no-one could afford to assemble for a studio recording today, it’s the Wiener Philharmoiker and, of course, Solti himself. But most opera lovers and certainly the audiophile ones will know all this. So why am I writing about it?
operaramblings 