Estimated duration

1 h 30 min., no intermission

Organizer

Helsingin kaupunginorkesteri

How do you condense Wagner's fifteen-hour Ring cycle into an hour and a quarter without a single singer? Our roaringly romantic evening will be conducted b

Susanna Mälkki, conductor
Richard Wagner: Der Ring ohne Worte

In 1987, the Berlin Philharmonic carried out a project with conductor Lorin Maazel in which a symphonic orchestral series was woven from Richard Wagner’s Ring opera cycle, starting from the greenish dawn of the Rhine and ending with the funeral pyre of the Twilight of the Gods.
The orchestra’s instruments jump into the roles of singers wherever the melody requires it: the flute is Sieglinde, the daughter of the god Wotan, the trombone is Siegfried, son of Sieglinde, and the double bass is the giant Fafner. The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra warmly welcomes back its former Chief Conductor Susanna Mälkki to the podium for our Wagnerian evening.