Der Ring ohne Worte

The piece unfolds as one continuous span of about an hour, moving through the story of the Ring cycle purely in orchestral terms, without singers or staging. It opens, as the cycle itself does, with a long, slowly swelling passage built from a single chord, suggesting the Rhine river coming into being out of silence. From there Maazel threads together the cycle's most recognizable orchestral music in roughly the order it occurs across the four operas: the entrance of the gods into Valhalla with its majestic brass theme, the fire music associated with the god Loge, the forging and riding music linked to heroic characters, and the tender orchestral interlude often called Siegfried's Rhine journey. The listener will recognize recurring short musical ideas, called leitmotifs, tied to characters, objects, and emotions, such as a motif for the magic ring itself or for the sword. These ideas return and change color as the orchestration passes them between brass, strings, and woodwinds. The piece builds toward the music that in the opera accompanies the destruction of Valhalla and the final immolation scene, arriving at a broad, sustained orchestral climax before the sound recedes, mirroring the Rhine's closing music in the original opera.

Conductor Lorin Maazel assembled "Der Ring ohne Worte" ("The Ring without Words") in 1987, drawing purely instrumental passages from Wagner's four-opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and arranging them into a single continuous orchestral work lasting about an hour. Maazel recorded it with the Berlin Philharmonic that same year, and the recording helped introduce the project to a wide audience. The purpose was practical as much as artistic: full "Ring" cycles are rare and enormously demanding to stage, so Maazel's synthesis let concert orchestras present the cycle's most celebrated orchestral music, minus the singers, plot, and staging, in a single evening. Since its premiere the piece has become a familiar way for symphony orchestras to program highlights of Wagner's massive achievement without requiring vocal soloists, a full opera production, or the multi-night commitment of the original cycle.