It was a fast-paced and busy first week of the Astoria Music Festival. Saturday’s concert fulfilled one of my long time dreams to play at least part of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle of operas. This came in the opening night performance of Act I of Die Walküre, with a trio of superb singers from the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, and San Francisco Opera companies. Truly in this music the orchestra is an additional character, almost like the chorus of Greek tragedy, commenting upon the proceedings and offering psychological underpinnings to the action on stage. It was also a pleasure to play one of Wagner’s rare small scale pieces, his Siegfried Idyll, written for his wife Cosima’s birthday and performed in their home by 13 musicians on Christmas morning 1870.