Wagner’s Ring Cycle: The Ultimate Box Set Binge
Tom Service explores classical music’s ultimate binge-listening box set - Richard Wagner’s apocalyptic four-part 16-hour marathon music drama, The Ring.
Tom Service explores classical music’s ultimate binge-listening box set - Richard Wagner’s apocalyptic four-part 16-hour marathon music drama, The Ring.
Cram packed with heroes, heroines, gods and goddesses, it took 25 years to write and has inspired everyone from JRR Tolkien to Francis Ford Coppola and Bugs Bunny.
Selfishness, deception, hypocrisy, greed, destruction; like all good box sets they’re all in there, but what’s The Ring really about? And what can we, and perhaps today’s world leaders, learn from it?
Tom has half an hour to find out.
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Music Played
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Richard Wagner
Gotterdammerung [Part 4 of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen']
Conductor: Karl Bohm. Performer: Birgit Nilsson. Performer: Josef Greindl. Performer: Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele. Performer: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.- Decca.
- 478 2367.
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Anna Russell
The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) for piano
Performer: Anna Russell. Performer: Harry Dworkin. Performer: John Coveart.- Sony.
- G010001222306F.
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Richard Wagner
Das Rheingold [Part 1 of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen']
Conductor: Karl Bohm. Performer: Theo Adam. Performer: Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele. Performer: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.- Decca.
- 478 2367.
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M J Franklyn
What's Opera, Doc?
Composer: Richard Wagner. Conductor: George Daugherty. Performer: The Warner Bros. Symphony Orchestra.- WARNER BROS.
- 9-26494-2.
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Richard Wagner
Die Walkure [Part 2 of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen']
Conductor: Karl Bohm. Performer: Theo Adam. Performer: Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele. Performer: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.- Decca.
- 478 2367.
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Rick Wakeman
The Inferno Ride
Performer: Rick Wakeman.- vpt.
- VPTCCD1.
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Richard Wagner
Siegfried [Part 3 of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen']
Conductor: Karl Bohm. Performer: Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele. Performer: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.- Decca.
- 478 2367.
Broadcasts
- Sun 31 May 202017:00BBC Radio 3
- Fri 5 Jun 202016:30BBC Radio 3
- Sun 14 Feb 202117:00BBC Radio 3
- Fri 19 Feb 202116:30BBC Radio 3
- Sun 13 Nov 202217:00BBC Radio 3
- Fri 18 Nov 202216:30BBC Radio 3
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The Listening Service
An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service
