I have been recommending Riccardo Chailly’s recording of Gurrelieder against all comers ever since it first appeared, but I wavered quite frequently during Sinopoli’s account. It is more luxurious, in a word: Sinopoli is more likely than Chailly to let his orchestra rip (the Staatskapelle Dresden letting rip is an awesome sound) and he is more generous with ample rubato. These qualities, together with Teldec’s sumptuous live recording (if an audience were present they must have been bound and gagged: not a single intrusive sound) count for a great deal in this piece, and for their sake I would have been prepared to put up with one or two less than ideal soloists. Yes, I suppose Deborah Voigt is less than ideal: her voice is bright, vibrant, fearless in ff and in the upper register, but needing hard work to fine it down to really expressive, quiet singing. But when she does work hard (not always, but often enough) she is impressive. So is Thomas Moser, sometimes a stalwartly baritonal Waldemar, once or twice a little unsteady, but with ringing, heroic top notes. Larmore is even brighter than Voigt, with a penetrating fast vibrato: strongly dramatic, but not as gravely moving as the best Waldtaube ever, Chailly’s Brigitte Fassbaender. Weikl and Riegel in their relatively small roles are luxury casting, especially the latter, with his vivid projection of Klaus-Narr’s words. No actor in the Speaker’s role, not even one as distinguished as Brandauer, will ever surpass Chailly’s Hans Hotter, much richer of voice and rising to a splendidly full-throated (and sung!) final word, but Brandauer has wit and character on his side. The choral singing in the later scenes is opulent.
Sinopoli takes 12 minutes longer over the piece than Chailly. Yes, his speeds are generally slower, and the long sequence of love-songs in Part 1 occasionally loses urgency as a result, but a good deal of the difference of timing is accounted for by flexible rubato, which will strike anti-Sinopolists as fussy but others (including me) as voluptuous. You could say, over-simplifying rather, that Chailly treats Gurrelieder as the root of Schoenberg’s later style, while Sinopoli sees it as the nineteenth-century’s gorgeous sunset. I will not be getting rid of Chailly’s account but am delighted that Sinopoli’s has joined it on my shelves as a totally valid alternative view of the work, one to which the sheer magnificence of his orchestra is admirably suited.'