Philharmonie Berlin

Der Ring ohne Worte with Tarmo Peltokoski and DSO Berlin

An orchestral program moving from ghostly textures and whispered tones to richly woven Romantic drama, delivered with striking clarity and emotional depth.

Philip Zuschke

15 Jun 2025 — 3 min read

🎻 Tarmo Peltokoski, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
🎶 Kaija Saariaho, Richard Wagner/Lorin Maazel
🏛️ Philharmonie Berlin
🗓️ 29.05.2025

A RING, REMEMBERED AND REIMAGINED

One of the quiet joys of living in Berlin is how patiently the classical music scene rewards curiosity. Any work you’ve ever wanted to hear live—no matter how obscure or monumental—will, eventually, make an appearance. You just have to wait.

For me, it was Der Ring ohne Worte. This orchestral digest of Wagner’s Ring was actually my very first Wagner experience, back in 2013 in Beijing. I remember the performance with striking clarity: Lorin Maazel himself, at 83, conducting his own arrangement with a sense of ceremony that felt larger than life. It was an introduction not just to Wagner, but indeed to the sheer possibilities of orchestral storytelling.

Maazel’s Der Ring ohne Worte is exactly what it promises to be—a Ring without words. It’s a 75-minute highlights reel of the 16-hour tetralogy, made entirely from Wagner’s original music, without a single added note. What it captures remarkably well is the interwoven structure of the Ring—the way themes and leitmotifs echo across its vast expanse, turning four operas into one continuous Gesamtkunstwerk. The arrangement doesn’t replace the full experience, of course, but it does cast the architecture of Wagner’s music into sharp relief.

Hearing it again this past week at the Philharmonie Berlin, though, felt like a completely different encounter. At the podium was 25-year-old Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski, and from the very first bar it was clear this would be no mere “best-of” compilation. The focus, control, and poise he drew from the orchestra—and the audience—was astonishing. No stray clapping, barely a cough, and at the end, a charged silence that hung in the hall for what felt like minutes. He held that moment quite literally in his hands.

There’s something magnetic about Peltokoski’s presence: not flashy, but incredibly grounded. After the performance, he went through each orchestral section with intention, acknowledging every group, and shaking hands with musicians in the front row. You could sense his respect for the ensemble—genuine, generous, and precise.

True to 2020s concert form, the evening opened with a contemporary piece: Laterna Magica by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (referencing the "magical lantern" deployed at the Ring premiere in Bayreuth in 1876). The atmosphere she conjures is more spectral than symphonic—eerie glissandi, whispered textures, and breathy “aspirated” passages where instruments are blown into without pitch. At one point, the musicians themselves begin whispering lines, weaving human breath into the fabric of the sound. It was strange, unsettling, and beautiful.

A full-circle night, then—past and present, sound and silence, Maazel and Saariaho, all threaded together under the baton of a conductor who seems to be just getting started.