Piece Comment

Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania


The ideas in the work (and this piece) are so many, and so varied, that they do that job for you. In perhaps in the strongest testament to Wagner's musical genius (or the piece's editing?), the ideas are held tightly together by the promise of the music itself, deftly interwoven through key musical passages. The disparate interviews (talking about Food, Jung, Zeppelin, Incest, Answering Machine Messages) and music work together to give a resounding, if impossible to summarize, answer to that nagging question radio listeners everywhere must ask about a piece: "so what?"

A fast overview of the Ring at the beginning might have been nice -- but probably also impossible. This thing is too big to digest in any less time. And the ending is exactly right. Well worth the hour.