Wagner's Ring Cycle in One Hour: A New Recording

Henk de Vlieger’s arrangement of the entirety of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, as The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure, isn’t the first reduction of the multi-hour extravaganza into an orchestral form, but it is one of the nicest. Written in 1991, it has had appearances all over the world, from Australia to Denmark, Germany to London, in just the first 3 months of 2026, and in Hong Kong in 2025. It is this last that is the subject of this new Deutsche Grammophon recording, with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by their new Music Director Designate, Tarmo Peltokoski. He will become the HK Phil’s Music Director starting in the 2026/2027 season.

Tarmo Peltokoski (photo by Peter Rigaud)

Wagner’s Ring operas have always had the ability to sweep us up in their vision and grandeur. So many of the orchestral parts have an independent life outside the cycle that a work like de Vlieger’s is welcome for putting them all together in one place. De Vlieger picks up the cycle as a ‘symphonic arc’ and creates a musical narrative that preserves all we love about it.

Richard Wagner: The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure – II. Das Rheingold

Rackham: The Rhine Maidens

Wagner’s opera was always more than just something running under the voices – it has its own role as ‘omniscient narrator’. We recognise it for all the leitmotifs it supplies to represent characters and objects, but it also always had a role in making psychological statements, and moral ones as well. The character may not understand his or her situation, but the orchestra does!

Rackham: The Rhine Maidens appeal to Loge

From the rising of the Rhine in the Prelude to the destruction of the world as we know it (and the return of the river) at the end of the cycle, de Vlieger gives us the world as Wotan would have it. Thwarted by thieving dwarves, by his wife’s demands in her goddess of marriage role, by the death of his hero, and the de-immortalization of his beloved daughter, the world of Wotan is one of continual frustration until Brünnhilde destroys it all. It’s all in the music and in The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure, you can either revisit the mythic world you love or discover it for the first time.

Richard Wagner: The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure – V. The Valkyries

Rackham: The Entry of the Valkyries

Maestro Peltokoski’s leadership is deft and sure, with Wagner’s emotions coming through clearly. The HK Phil’s familiarity with the entire cycle, starting with their performance of Lorin Maazel’s Ring Without Words in 1991, and continuing with their concert versions of each of the operas under Jaap van Zweden, with Matthias Goerne as Wotan in 2015 (Das Rheingold), 2016 (Die Walküre), 2017 (Siegfried), and 2018 (Götterdämmerung). That’s a history that few orchestras can match.

Rackham: Siegfried discovers Brünnhilde

The orchestra’s playing is exactly what you want in this overview of the magnificence that Wagner created. You’re finally able to hear the stillness that opens the cycle, the forest bird in Siegfried, and then put it all together in the final movement, Brünnhilde’s Sacrifice.

Richard Wagner: The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure – XIV. Brünnhilde’s Sacrifice