Known as widely for his teaching as for his orchestral direction, Hans Swarowsky has much to share with a younger generation of musicians. He studied composition and conducting with several of the twentieth century's greatest icons, absorbing and exercising what he had learned in a respected career as a conductor.

Through his many years of conducting, he managed to record many works by different composers, but perhaps one of his most significant would be Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen during the occupation of Czechoslovakia, making the recording very difficult to rehearse because musicians were trying to return home whenever the borders were declared open.

However, despite an uneven cast, his historic recording of Wagner's Ring cycle, taped in Prague, has considerable power and poetry.

Cast:
- Rolf Polke (Wotan)
- Fritz Uhl (Loge)
- Rolf Kühne (Alberich)
- Herold Kraus (Mime)
- Takao Okamura (Fafner)
- Ruth Hesse (Fricka)
- Heidemarie Ferch (Freia)
- Ursula Boese (Erda)
- Gerald McKee (Siegmund, Siegfried)
- Ditha Sommer (Sieglinde, Guthrune)
- Nadezda Kniplova (Brünnhilde)
- Rudolf Knoll (Gunther)
- Otto von Rohr (Hagen)

Recorded: 1968