Moved by Mysterious Forces

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WAGNER: “Die Walkure,” Act 1

Deborah Polaski, soprano; Placido Domingo, tenor; John Tomlinson, bass-baritone; Staatskapelle Berlin; Daniel Barenboim, conductor

Teldec Classics

This act has a long history as a concert and recorded excerpt, for obvious reasons: urgent, romantic confrontations and narratives that rush headlong on glorious music into the urgent, romantic apotheosis of a love duet. Barenboim guides a highly flexible, febrile performance that storms and exults better than it broods, based on a live benefit concert at the Staatsoper Berlin in 1993. His orchestra sounds bright and brassy on top--this is Fanfare City, after all--and mellow and disappearing on the bottom. But if you are buying Act 1 of “Walkure,” you are buying singing. Domingo is a suitably heroic and uncommonly agile Siegmund, more compelling in joy than despair, perhaps, but always articulate and firmly focused. Polaski is a confident and unconflicted Sieglinde, almost to the point of complacency at times, and Tomlinson projects Hunding’s menace with a somber, cynical growl.

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