Wagner´s Ring Motifs

‘Wagner’s Ring Motifs’ is the first of auricula’s audio guides to appear in English and is based on the company’s 2004 release of a German version of the same text. The authors are Sven Friedrich, curator of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, and Gerhard K. Englert, the editor of the previous audio guides that have been released in the same series and that explore the world of classical music. Together, the authors offer listeners a modern, convenient and quick introduction to Wagner’s cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung. The motifs are presented in the order of their first appearance in the cycle and accompanied by an expert commentary. In this way, the listener is also introduced to the story of the Ring, an introduction that follows the narrative very closely by examining the development and meaning of the music. ‘Wagner’s Ring Motifs’ opens up the whole work in this way. It is aimed in the first instance at listeners new to the Ring and is intended to convey the fascination of Wagner’s music in a clear and simple manner and to decode the musical and dramatic language of the mythical world of the cycle. But even listeners already familiar with the work will find that this database provides them with a crash course in what Thomas Mann described as the ‘allusive magic’ of the Ring’s leitmotifs. These leitmotifs are reproduced in the twelve-page booklet which, together with the two CDs, is an ideal preparation for any performance of the Ring. The narrator is the distinguished British bass-baritone Sir John Tomlinson, who has appeared in countless performances at the Bayreuth Festival since making his début there as Wotan in 1988. The double CD (ISBN 3-936196-05-2) is available at most good bookshops and also from record dealers. Auricula is specialized in publishing audio guides in the field of classical music. In Germany the CD edition is published under the name "Der Klassik(ver)führer"