Here we have a difficulty. Which to choose between three recommendable, yet very different interpretations? I certainly agree with RO's outright enthusiasm for the Walter/Decca transfer. Though in some quarters criticized for its sound quality, it has an emotional thrill, an immediacy about it that no other version has yet equalled, or is likely to. All the participants were absolutely dedicated to Walter's tense and urgent direction. But I mustn't succumb to the temptation of re-reviewing that version; it is simply that beside it, the Klemperer—as a reading—seems curiously detached. In his famous BBC TV interview Klemperer declared that he was the objective one, Walter the Romantic, and he knew what he was talking about. Klemperer lays the music before you, even lays bare its soul by his simple method of steady tempos (too slow in the third song, I feel) and absolute textural clarity—where else are the wind parts in the finale so searing because they are so clearly exposed?—but he doesn't quite demand your emotional capitulation as does Walter. Ludwig does that (not quite so potently as the vocally much more fallible Fassbaender on DG), her glorious voice unequalled in this music even by Ferrier, though, with Walter at her side, she is just as moving, more so maybe—but here we are choosing between two highly personal and equally valid readings. In the tenor songs, Wunderlich, and certainly Araiza, cannot match Patzak, simply because of the older singer's way with the text; ''fest steh'n'' in the opening song, ''Mir ist als wie im Traum'', the line plaintive and the tone poignant, are simply unsurpassable. By any other yardstick, Wunderlich is a prized paragon, musical and vocally free.
So truthful and natural is the sound on the revived EMI that it easily beats not only the mono Decca but also the too-recessed DG. With voice and orchestra in perfect relationship and everything sharply defined, the old methods of the 1960s have nothing to fear here from today's competition. I still admire the Giulini for his flexible and deeply-considered reading, and for Fassbaender. But the two older rivals will never be thrust aside; the Walter for its authority and intensity, the feeling of being present on an historic occasion, the Klemperer for its insistent strength and beautiful singing, now even more evident on CD. Both have to be in any self-respecting collection of Mahler.'