The Golden Ring
DirectorHumphrey Burton
1 hr 27 minDocumentary,
Music
Plot
Watching the Vienna Philharmonic Georg Solti and a stellar cast record Wagners immense Götterdämmerung for Decca in the fall of 1964 provides a thousand lessons in the art of working under pressure For this classic documentary The Golden Ring a BBC camera crew eavesdropped as producer John Culshaw guided his engineering team through tricky technical maneuvers far removed from the relative ease of modern digital editing What utter concentration and focus Birgit Nilsson Wolfgang Windgassen Gottlob Frick and Dietrich FischerDieskau bring to their collective and individual singing Solti for his part oozes energy and exactitude as he pleads for greater precision and frets over details in the car en route to the sessions