In the summer of 2009 the Berliner Philharmoniker completed a performance of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen for the second time in their history. Following a first production with Herbert von Karajan in the late 1960s, the musicians under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle again tackled Wagner’s mammoth work, starting in 2006. Stéphane Braunschweig was the director of this co-production from the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Festival at Aix-en-Provence. 

When this current Ring came to an end with Götterdämmerung in Aix, it was greeted enthusiastically by the international press – particularly for the performance by the orchestra. Le Figaro wrote: “What Simon Rattle and his musicians achieve is astounding. One is submerged in a profusion of sound which reaches into every pore. The orchestra remains ... flexible, as capable of conveying the greatest softness as of conveying earthquake-like outbursts. Rattle succeeds in giving the drama a fluidity which marries every inflection of the text with a chamber-music-like transparency.” The Wall Street Journal in turn praised “a cast of superb singers ... especially Swedish soprano Katarina Dalayman dominating the stage as Brünnhilde and Canadian tenor Ben Heppner who sang a near-perfect Siegfried.”