CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
New York Philharmonic

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

New York Philharmonic
Lorin Maazel, Music Director and Conductor

WAGNER/MAAZEL The Ring Without Words, for Orchestra

Program Notes:

by James Keller, New York Philharmonic Program Annotator

Richard Wagner
Born May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Saxony (Germany); died February 13, 1883, in Venice, Italy.

Lorin Maazel
Born March 6, 1930, in Neuilly, France.

The Ring Without Words
Wagner wrote his four-opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen over the course of 26 years, from 1848, when he made the first prose sketch for the libretto, until 1874, when he placed final details in the score of Götterdämmerung.

The full four-opera cycle was first given August 13, 14, 16, and 17, 1876, at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Hans Richter conducting. Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were then receiving their world premieres, but the two preceding operas already had been unveiled: Das Rheingold, on September 22, 1869, and Die Walküre, on June 26, 1870, in both cases at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich, Franz Wüllner conducting.

Mr. Maazel carried out his symphonic synthesis of music from Wagner’s Ring cycle in 1987 at the request of Telarc Recordings. The first performance of Mr. Maazel’s score was as a Telarc CD recorded in December 1987 (with the Berliner Philharmoniker), released the following year.
Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of The Ring Without Words.

Scoring: piccolo and 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes and English horn, 3 clarinets and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 8 horns (4 doubling Wagner tubas), 3 trumpets and bass trumpet, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani (two pairs), 3 anvils, orchestra bells, 2 snare drums, tam-tam, triangle, cymbals, 4 harps, and strings.

The gigantic operatic tetralogy known as Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) stands at the center of Richard Wagner’s output, which is another way of saying that this unique achievement marks one of the most inescapably critical junctures in the history of opera or, indeed, of any kind of music or even any aesthetic aspiration of any sort. Taken as a whole it is surely the most imposing work in the canon of classical music of the Western world: Wagner labored over it from 1848 until 1874, taking time out to write Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger along the way. In the end, its four constituent operas—Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung—together run some 15 hours (give or take an hour). That doesn’t count the intermissions and other respites that are most assuredly required in live performances, which invariably occupy four separate evenings typically scheduled within several days of one another.

It was first presented as a cycle from August 13 to 17, 1876, at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which the composer had had constructed in large part to meet the unusual performance demands of this work. From then on it has been the subject of endless inquiry and debate, obsessively adored by some, ridiculed by others. Not a few informed parties have found that their reactions to the Ring evolve markedly with repeated exposures, changing according to the shifting prisms of personal circumstance, world politics, and countless other variables.

That is not unusual for works of mythology, which have a tendency to encode universal truths—or at least universal questions—in characters whose roles and actions seem elemental to the human experience. As was his custom, Wagner wrote not only the music but also the librettos for his Ring operas, and in this case he turned to medieval Germanic-Nordic legends for his material, most specifically to a group of Icelandic eddas and sagas, an Old Norse prose narrative, and the Middle High German epic Das Nibelungenlied. Wagner processed this material through his own ultra-Romantic sensibilities to yield a highly stylized, in no way colloquial text that evoked its ancient roots while rendering it captivating to mid-19th-century audiences. He was nothing if not confident. In a letter to Theodor Uhlig, one of his closest friends and supporters, he spoke of his libretto-in-progress: “The whole will become—out with it! I am not ashamed to say so—the greatest work of poetry ever written.”

In Wagner’s highly original Ring operas, the immense orchestra plays an essential role in both characterization and action. In fact, many of the most well-known and frequently extracted sections of the Ring are orchestral portions: The Prelude to Das Rheingold, the “Ride of the Valkyries” and “Magic Fire Music” from Die Walküre, the “Forest Murmers” from Siegfried, and “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” and “Siegfried’s Funeral Music” from Götterdämmerung. Lorin Maazel, the New York Philharmonic’s Music Director and himself a composer, has paraphrased Wieland Wagner, the composer’s grandson and longtime overseer of the evolving Wagnerian tradition at Bayreuth, as having told him, in 1960: “The Orchestra—that’s where it all is—the text behind the text, the universal subconscious that binds Wagner’s personae one to the other and to the proto-ego of legend.”

Mr. Maazel’s symphonic synthesis of music from the Ring does not pretend to address all the voluminous detail of Wagner’s tetralogy, the expanses of which are famously shot through with unifying leitmotifs, but as a 70-minute condensation of 15 glorious hours it is a remarkable feat of editing that is unstinting in musical payoff. As the Philharmonic’s Music Director—who most recently composed an opera, based on George Orwell’s 1984—wrote about the process of reducing Wagner’s Ring into The Ring Without Words:

I was intrigued by the challenge: could a symphonic synthesis of the Ring reveal the essentials of its code? I bolted the following list of criteria to my drawing board:
ONE: The synthesis must be free-flowing (no stops) and chronological, beginning with the first note of Rheingold and finishing with the last chord of Götterdämmerung.
TWO: The transitions must be harmonically and periodically justifiable, the pacing contrasts commensurate with the length of the work.
THREE: Most all of the music originally written for orchestra without voice must be used, adding those sections with a vocal line essential to a synthesis and only where the line is either doubled by an orchestral instrument, “imaginable” or, in the rare instance, when it can be reproduced by an instrument.
FOUR: Every note must be Wagner’s own.

Thus we begin in the “greenish twilight” of the Rhine, float up to the home of the gods, fall among hammering dwarfs “smithying” away, ride Donner’s thunderbolt, crawl with the thirst-crazed Siegmund to the haven (temporary!) of Sieglinde’s hearth and solace (here a shadowy flute echoes her “Labung biet’ ich dem lechzenden Gaumen: Wasser, wie du gewollt”—literally: “Comfort I offer to the languishing palate: [here is] water, as you wanted [!].”) In the sound code, we “see” his loving gaze, their flight, Wotan’s rage, the cavalcade of Brünnhilde’s sisters, Wotan’s farewell to his favorite daughter, Mime’s fright, Siegfried’s forging of the magic sword, his wanderings through the forest, his slaying of the Dragon, the Dragon’s lament, day breaking around Siegfried’s and Brünnhilde’s passions, Siegfried’s Rhine journey, Hagen’s call to his clan, Siegfried and the Rhinemaidens, his death and the funeral music, Immolation.

Though no conscious attempt was made to include all the Ring’s motifs, most of them do surface in one form or another.


The Ring in a Nutshell

Some of our listeners may be interested in a refresher on what goes on in the Ring, the better to situate these passages in the ongoing drama. In the Ring, Wagner tells a complicated story that moves through landscapes subterranean, terrestrial, and celestial, through telescoping generations. The titular ring was forged by Alberich, a dwarf of the Nibelung race, out of gold he stole from the Rhine Maidens. In Das Rheingold the ring is stolen by Wotan, King of the Gods, to be used to ransom back the Goddess of Youth, who is being held by two netherworld giants he had hired to build his lavish palace, Valhalla. When the giants receive the ring and return their captive, one of them kills the other rather than share this valuable treasure. 

In Die Walküre, we witness the love affair of Siegmund and Sieglinde (who are revealed to be brother and sister) and Siegmund’s plan to slay Sieglinde’s husband. Wotan instructs his Valkyrie-daughter Brünnhilde to protect Siegmund in the impending fight, but at the protestations of his ever-nagging wife, he reverses his instructions. Brünnhilde’s sympathies remain with Siegmund, and she does her best to save him. Wotan prevails, shattering Siegmund’s sword; Siegmund dies in the struggle, and Brünnhilde shepherds the pregnant Sieglinde to safety, telling her that the son in her womb will someday reassemble the shards of Siegmund’s sword into a mighty weapon. To punish Brünnhilde for her disobedience, Wotan plunges her into a magical sleep and surrounds her with a circle of fire.

The third opera, Siegfried, is named after that son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, who has been raised in a sylvan cave by Mime, a dwarf who educates him about his origins and the prophecy about re-forging the sword—which Siegfried manages to do. Mime leads Siegfried to the lair of the surviving giant (who has transformed himself into a dragon) in the hopes of gaining the gold. The hero slays the dragon and takes the golden ring. The two dwarves—Alberich and Mime—try to take the ring, but Siegfried prevails. A bird leads Siegfried to the sleeping Brünnhilde; Wotan tries to block him, but Siegfried shatters Wotan’s spear with his own magic sword. He awakens the Valkyrie with a kiss: they fall in love, and Brünnhilde welcomes her new life with him, bidding farewell to her status as a deity.

In Gotterdämmerung, Siegfried gives the ring to Brünnhilde and sets off on a journey down the Rhine into a nether-realm of evil creatures. Under their enchantment, the disguised Siegfried returns to Brünnhilde and wrests the ring from her. Not realizing that he does not control his own actions, the angry Brünnhilde plots with confederates to murder Siegfried. She gets the ring, but realizes the horror of the situation she has helped fuel. She has a funeral pyre built for Siegfried and rides her horse into its towering flames, ring in hand. The Rhine overflows its banks, and the ensuing flood drags everything underwater, including the golden ring whose fateful trajectory—itself a “ring” leading back to the Rhine Maidens—has proved to be such a curse. Even Valhalla is in shambles, burning in the distance as the final curtain falls.

Copyright © 2008 by James Keller

New York Philharmonic
Lorin Maazel, Music Director and Conductor
Lorin Maazel, who has led more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances, became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2002. His appointment came 60 years after his debut with the Orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, then the Orchestra’s summer venue. As Music Director he has conducted seven World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commissions, including the Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy Award–winning On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; and Melinda Wagner’s Trombone Concerto. He has led cycles of works by Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, and conducted the Orchestra’s inaugural performances in the DG Concerts series—a groundbreaking initiative to offer downloadable New York Philharmonic concerts exclusively on iTunes

Mr. Maazel has taken the Orchestra on numerous international tours, including
Asia in 2008—to Taipei, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing; and to Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, for the first visit there by an American orchestra. Other recent tours have included the May 2007 tour of Europe; the November 2006 visit to Japan and Korea; the Philharmonic Tour of Italy in June 2006, sponsored by Generali; the two-part 75th Anniversary European Tour to 13 cities in five countries in autumn 2005; and residencies in Cagliari, Sardinia, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado.

In addition to the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Maazel is Music Director of two recently created musical organizations: the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, and Italy’s Symphonica Toscanini, an orchestra of top young professional players, based in Rome. A frequent conductor on the world’s operatic stages, he returned to The Metropolitan Opera in January 2008 for the first time in 45 years to conduct Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Prior to his tenure as New York Philharmonic Music Director, Mr. Maazel led more than 100 performances of the Orchestra as a guest conductor. He served as music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993–2002) and has held positions as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988–96); general manager and chief conductor of the Vienna Staatsoper (1982–84); music director of The Cleveland Orchestra (1972–82); and artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1965–71). He is an honorary member of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic.

A second-generation American, born in Paris, Lorin Maazel was raised and educated in the US. He took his first violin lesson at age five, and conducting lessons at seven. Between ages nine and 15 he conducted most of the major American orchestras. In 1953 he made his European conducting debut in Catania, Italy.

Mr. Maazel is also an accomplished composer. His opera, 1984, received its world premiere on May 3, 2005, at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and was revived at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia in April 2008, and at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in May 2008.


The New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the US and one of the oldest in the world. Lorin Maazel became Music Director in 2002, succeeding Kurt Masur in a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that has included Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, and Pierre Boulez; Mahler, Walter, and Toscanini. Since the Orchestra was founded in 1842 it has championed the new music of its time, commissioning or premiering many important works, from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (1893), and Gershwin’s An American in Paris (1928) to John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize–winning On the Transmigration of Souls (2002, the CD of which received three Grammy Awards) and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto (2007).

The Philharmonic has long played a leading role in American musical life and over the last century has become renowned around the globe, having appeared in 422 cities in 59 countries on five continents, including, most recently, Taipei, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing on the Asia 2008 tour—and in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the first American orchestra to perform there. Long a media pioneer, the Philharmonic began radio broadcasts in 1922 and is currently represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week; the program is syndicated nationally 52 weeks per year, streamed on the Orchestra’s website, nyphil.org, and carried on XM Satellite Radio. In addition, the Orchestra’s concerts are now broadcast throughout Europe on BBC Radio 3. On television, in the 1950s and ’60s, the Philharmonic inspired a generation of music lovers through Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, telecast on CBS; its presence on television has continued with annual appearances on PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center, which began with that series’s inaugural episode in 1976. In 2003 it made television history as the first orchestra ever to perform live on the Grammy Awards telecast, one of the most-watched television events worldwide.

The New York Philharmonic may be the most recorded orchestra in history, with more than 1,500 authorized releases to its credit, starting with its first pressing in 1917. The internet has expanded the Orchestra’s reach, and in 2006 the Philharmonic became the first major American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, which are available on the DG Concerts label, exclusively on iTunes.

On June 4, 2007, the New York Philharmonic proudly announced a new partnership with Credit Suisse, its first-ever and exclusive Global Sponsor.