Due to the fact that recently I have spent a considerable amount of time driving, I decided that there could be no better opportunity to revisit the Ring Cycle. I was fortunate enough to see it staged last June at the Vienna State Opera and while there were some serious deficiencies in the production — such as the Brünnhilde — I found the experience of seeing the entire work again to be engaging, albeit tiring. Vienna’s Ring Cycle circa 2003 used to be presented in a most civilized manner: after a mid-week performance of Rheingold, the lengthier operas were held for Sundays starting in the late afternoon, allowing for sufficient time to enjoy a fortifying goulash prior to the experience (not unlike the American National Football League’s once-per-week schedule). This time around, they decided to go for a more intense schedule, presenting all four operas within the space of a week. I think I prefer the leisurely approach: in the week version, I felt as through I was running some kind of opera marathon, not once but three times. After seeing the entire cycle, I decided that it would be the ideal time to cement the operas into my musical memory by listening to them whenever possible. Pairing many hours in the car with the Ring Cycle was an ideal combination.

What has struck me in my most recent exploration of these works is their reliance on moments, a characteristic that I associate more with Italian operas rather than German ones. Virtually all of us are acquainted with these events in Italian works: consider the dramatic moments as Canio puts on his costume in Pagliacci, Cavaradossi recalls a rendez-vous under the stars, or Aida conjures up distant Ethiopia. In contrast, Wagnerian music drama is rarely discussed in such terms. Instead, there is a fixation on motives, particularly those that can be traced throughout the work and serve as clear signifiers of objects.

Yet Wagner’s works are equally dependent on moments to make them work. There is one key difference between a Wagnerian moment and an Italian one: Wagner relies less on the singer and considerably more on the orchestra. Moments are by no means unique to the Ring Cycle. Consider the return of Isolde in Act III of Tristan und Isolde: as she enters, we hear the same music that was played when the potion took its effect in the first act. However, this is no passionate acknowledgment of love; instead, the lack of resolution is heightened by the scurrying motive in the strings that abates only after Tristan sings, ‘Isolde,’ an echo of his response in Act I and his last utterance before succumbing to the wound inflicted by Melot. Unquestionably, the motives serve a crucial role in this scene, but the culmination creates an operatic moment that is no less effective than those of his Italian contemporaries.

Considering the length of the Ring Cycle, it is astounding that Wagner created moments that are so sonically distinct that they can be remembered across operas. One of my recent favorites is the moment of Brünnhilde’s awakening in Siegfried (‘Heil dir, Sonne’), accompanied by a series of chords moving from an e minor to a C major, back to the e minor and then to a d minor. The passage stands out because of the unexpected progressions and the distinct orchestration in the winds and brass with harp accents. This sequence returns exactly twice more in the Ring Cycle. It is the first sound heard in Götterdämmerung (now lowered by a semi-tone) and, in what has to be one of the most poignant uses of a leitmotif in the entire work, when Siegfried suddenly remembers his love for Brünnhilde prior to his death and calls her name. The device is not unlike Tristan’s final ‘Isolde,’ yet here it creates a parallel with Brünnhilde in Siegfried since it is his own awakening from a spell.

Of the Ring Cycle operas, my favorite is Götterdämmerung, despite the fact that I am certain Wagner could have divided the acts more mercifully (the Prologue and Act I take two hours to perform). This was Wagner’s starting point and it is the closest to a conventional opera: we have a chorus in Act 2 as well as a trio; there is action instead of reflection (consider Act 2 of Walküre by contrast!); and all of the time-worn operatic themes surface such as tragedy, betrayal, and deception. Perhaps this is also why it features such unforgettable moments.

György Ligeti

You all know that I am a big fan of lists. Today I am sharing with you five of my most favorite orchestra pieces. Let me know how your list would look like!

1. Luciano Berio: Sinfonia
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2. Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gruppen
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3. Iannis Xenakis: Metastasis
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4. Georg Friedrich Haas: In Vain
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5. György Ligeti: Atmospheres
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Usually, flipping through the classical channel on a flight is an exercise in masochism that ends with me saying aloud, “this is why classical music is dead and rotting!” But Delta’s new selection on 757-200(E) is different.

Twenty-four complete classical discs are presented with media-player style controls. I began by listening to Julian Anderson Khorovod from his CD Alhambra Fantasy; this is a CD that I’ve long enjoyed and actually had with me on my laptop, but having it presented to me in my seatback inspired me to listen to it again. Plus the dynamics compression was done well, leaving everything audible without taking away much of the crispness of the percussion. Say what you want about the importance of audio fidelity, compression is really useful when listening on a plane even with noise-cancelling headphones; I wish iTunes had it.

I passed over the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Higdon’s City Scape and Concerto for Orchestra (not bad pieces, but not my favorites, and I just recently taught City Scape) and continued with Holst’s second suite for winds conducted by Fredrick Fennell (the recording that begins with the sound of a tuba player losing his job). I continued with a CD pairing Mozart’s Gran Partita with Berg’s Chamber Concerto. Unfortunately, additional information about the discs beyond title and track names isn’t available, but it appears to be on a Decca label.

I listened for a bit to the Symphony of Psalms on a disc paired with the Symphony in C and Symphony in 3 Movements–I don’t know who was conducting or playing, the string playing and brass were vigorous, but the chorus’s sound was really affected by the editing and/or compression, and the reed and piano performances were weak, and there was so much else to dig into that I moved on to Tan Dun’s Symphony 1997, a work I didn’t know. It had some of the clichéd pathos and (to me) unoriginal percussion writing that has not let me yet fully embrace Tan as a top notch composer, but like most of his best works, the pacing is perfect. That it’s about as much of a symphony as Cats is an opera is immaterial.

In a somewhat orientalist decision, adjacent to the Tan CD, we find Lang Lang playing recent Chinese compositions on his “Dragon Songs” CD and a complete recording of Puccini’s Turandot (Sutherland, Pavarotti, Pears, Mehta—this is no bargain-basement recording). But we forget about such decisions when we realize that they’ve actually included vocal music!—something few classical radio stations dare to play anymore—also represented by a terrible muzaky collection of trite by Placido Domingo (typical airline fare; the one true bomb), a complete Solti recording of Die Walküre (less typical; unfortunately, not presented as a gapless album and with weird fades), Strauss’s Four Last Songs, and the Faure Requiem. John Corigliano’s Second Symphony (a transcription of his string quartet) is actually something I’ve heard on other flights, but Ives’s string quartet and Mahler 8 were surprising finds.

The net result is that you can listen even listen with fresh ears to the CDs of The Nutcracker, Bach (WTC and Goldberg), Beethoven 5, Joshua Bell playing the Four Seasons, or Bernstein’s Copland (Appalachian Spring). Just by having other choices, these works regain their status as masterpieces that have stood the test of time and do not feel like they usually do in these situations, as warhorses chosen to pander to the largest possible audiences.

Most airlines seem to secure rights from one or two labels (usually Sony with its own limited list of the same artists), but someone at Delta must have spent a lot of time making calls. The variety of labels presented is remarkable: Decca, DG, Philips, Telarc, Ondine, Sony, and even Naxos are available. Browsing beyond classical, the other stations seemed to take some advantage of the added space to go beyond the major hits, but did not seem to me nearly as adventurous as the classical station. One bow to the corporate world: Lily Allen’s “Fuck You”—ubiquitous in every bar, taxi, and grocery store in Europe this year—is bowdlerized to “*uck You” and loses its cute charm. But the lesser depth of these stations was no big loss, because I kept returning to something new on the classical station. For their product’s ability to keep a musicologist occupied without his iPod for an entire eight hour flight, those who worked on the system for Delta’s 757 are definitely to be praised.