These are performances that, over and above their historic interest, are well worth anyone’s attention. The Humperdinck houses an ideal Gretel in Berger – ideal in tone, accent and phraseology. Girlish innocence, youthful wonder and, at such a moment as “Bleib still!”, when the gingerbread house is first espied, an immediate response to the text, add up to an inspired interpretation. Schilp, though a deal younger than Berger, sounds almost too rich in tone for Hansel, hers is more an Octavian voice, but she also excels in her fresh way with the text, and they make a lovable pair. Nissen is a wonderfully articulate Father (listen to his rolled ‘r’s in his 6/8 description of the witches), Waldenau a really old-fashioned German Mutti, just right. The then 58-year-old Arndt-Ober, whose recording career was mostly in the acoustic era, may have lost some of the bloom in her tone, but she makes a lively, unexaggerated Witch – “hocus-pocus” is characterized, not guyed. With Rother’s heady, direct conducting, warm, idiomatic playing from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and a recording – one or two moments of distortion of the children’s voices in Act 1 apart – good for its day, this is an enjoyable, unassuming traversal of the score that I enjoyed this time round as much as I have done on LP in the past.
Schwarzkopf was the Gretel in the next recording of the opera ten years later (EMI, 4/88). In Abu Hassan she is heard, at the start of her career, in a set that has always been something of a collector’s piece. As Fatime, her bright, clear tone is caught at its pristine best, and she phrases her aria, and her part in the duets, with a technical assurance that is already exemplary. As her beloved Hassan, Witte sings attractively off the words. The veteran Bohnen is an endearing Omar. The recording is even truer than that of the Hansel and allows us to hear more of the orchestration, revealing the young Weber as already a master of instrumentation. Dialogue, quite a lot of it, is included, but of course Preiser provide neither text nor translation. Never mind: the plot is unimportant: the music’s the thing. This piece, dating from 1811, is Weber’s Entfuhrung, an obvious influence on this extended Singspiel, but he is already very much his own man – as in Fatime’s second aria. Since this is the only version of the work in the catalogue it is all the more welcome, particularly in such an engaging performance, with the Berlin ensemble of the day on good form despite the terrible events happening in the outside world. The two generously filled CDs represent good value.'