Seán wrote:I listened to Bach for a couple of hours today and then returned to a CD I have listened to on a few occasions over the past few days:
I find it very difficult to describe what I make of this recording other than to say that I find it a pure joy to listen to: every singer, particularly the trio of Schwarzkopf, Ludwig & Hoffgen are stunning, the Philharmonia sound wonderful too and the performance is beautifully captured by the sound engineers. The accompanying booklet contains the libretti which really adds to the enjoyment, all in all this is a very satisfying recording.
The BIG problem with Klemperer´s Magic Flute was his refusal to record the dialogue. Without the dialogue it kind of sounds like a "highlights" recording. Walter Legge went to great pains to convince him that the dialogue was every bit as much a part of the Magic Flute as the music, but alas, to no avail.
His conducting is indeed extraordinary, and I have always thought Klemperer a superb Mozartian because in spite of the Brucknerian tempos, he acknowledges the importance of the woodwinds in the orchestral texture, favoring a balance that Brüggen or Gardiner might recognize (Karajan for example always favored the strings, that´s why his Mozart performances sound more dated).
The singing in Klemperer´s Magic Flute is also extraordinary. Both Gundula Janowitz and Lucia Popp were making their recording debuts, and both are among the finest exponents of their roles. Gottlob Frick is a god-like Sarastro, quite simply magnificent, and Nicolai Gedda is a youthful, ever stylish Tamino. I don´t like quite as much Walter Berry´s Papageno, but that´s the only disappointment.
The Klemperer recording always came in direct competition with the contemporaneous Böhm recording for DG. That is also one of the finest recordings ever, with unmatched performances by Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Tamino and Papageno. But where it really scores over the Klemperer is in that it includes the dialogue.
