The four operas of the cycle were also issued as individual albums, and the three-circle design appeared on each of them.
The colours and patterns vary from album to album, but the basic idea is unchanged, although the circles are no longer in sombre black but in metaphorically gleaming gold. With their block-like forms, which despite their geometric nature vibrate with energy, the fragments are clearly linked to a style currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity in the world of design and architecture: brutalism. There are echoes of the brutalist style, characterised among other things by its rough surfaces, in the linocut-like elements of the circles. The man behind the imagery was Hungarian-born artist Imre Vincze, who had been head of set design at the Salzburg Festival since 1962. He soon became one of Karajan’s closest artistic collaborators, and as he was also responsible for the Festival’s graphic design, he was the logical choice to be entrusted with designing the covers for the conductor’s series of epoch-making albums.
Karajan recorded Wagner’s four operas for Deutsche Grammophon with meticulous attention to detail at Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche, one per year between 1967 and 1970.
Over the course of the four years during which they were involved in working on the Ring cycle in the studio (1967-70 inclusive), Karajan, the Berliner Philharmoniker and almost all the singers who appeared on the recordings also performed each of the four operas of Wagner’s Bühnenfestspiel “for three days and a preliminary evening” in turn, live on stage at the Salzburg Easter Festival, which was essentially founded for that purpose.
Karajan was therefore able to fine-tune the sound of each production in the studio, leaving him free to focus primarily on the physical, visual aspects of the staging during rehearsals in Salzburg. A few months later, the album of that year’s instalment in the tetralogy would be released: the whole idea was both a logistical and a marketing masterstroke!
The stage designs for Karajan’s Salzburg Easter Festival productions of the four operas were created by Günther Schneider-Siemssen. He and the conductor developed a close professional relationship and worked on a total of 28 productions together. Incidentally, having conceived the designs for no fewer than seven Ring cycles, Schneider-Siemssen acquired the nickname “Lord of the Rings”!
The recordings enjoyed great success and Imre Vincze’s design was retained for some years, but in the late 1970s the album covers were adapted to the changing tastes of the time by graphic artist Werner Koberstein, who worked for DG many times and chose to use images from the Salzburg productions.
A photograph of one of Schneider-Siemssen’s Salzburg designs – a scene from Die Walküre – also features on the cover of the current DG Karajan Ring box set.
Will the Imre Vincze design be revived for the Ring’s 150th anniversary in 2026?
For now, only the Norns can say.
