Götterdämmerung review – Jurowski’s six-year completion of Wagner’s Ring cycle was well worth the wait

Royal Festival Hall, London
Jurowski’s attention to detail across four-and-a-half hours brought the darkness of Wagner’s score thrillingly to life

Wagner’s Ring cycle is famously long. Even so, a cycle that has lasted more than six years is some kind of record. Back in 2018, Vladimir Jurowski was still the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal conductor when he embarked on the tetralogy. Then Covid intervened, and Jurowski moved to new posts in Germany. As a result, the cycle’s completion has had to wait a further three seasons, until now.

Jurowski’s Götterdämmerung was overwhelmingly worth waiting for. Concert performances of Wagner inescapably place the orchestra even more at the centre of proceedings than ever. This was enhanced by a restrained and minimalist semi-staging by PJ Harris, atmospheric videos by Pierre Martin Oriol and, in this most foreboding part of the Ring cycle, Mark Jonathan’s lighting, which began and ended in the pitch dark. The result was a performance more than usually focused on Jurowski and the LPO.