Well, here's a surprise: this super-bargain version enters the lists and—to mix a metaphor—virtually jumps to the top of the pile at a single leap. As a direct, no-nonsense version well sung all round, no weakness in the cast and many strengths, it immediately has an advantage over its rivals. Add to that an interpretation that rivals Bohm's mid-price version in theatrical excitement and urgency of delivery and you'll appreciate why I have enjoyed it so much. Steinberg doesn't attempt a 'deep' interpretation, conducting the work as a straight-forward opera not a music-drama viewed from the other end of Wagner's achievement and there's much to be said for this approach. He draws from his Austrian Radio forces playing and singing that has an inspiriting verve to it. The orchestra seems to be full of players of individual distinction, particularly where the winds are concerned and the choir, as sailors and townspeople, deliver their words and notes with tone and a unanimity that rivals that of their famous Leipzig counterparts. So all the big scenes, especially those at the start of the second and third 'acts' (actually we have here the single-act version), both conducted with rhythmic elan and tight control by Steinberg. This is tremendous stuff.
Ingrid Haubold, a singer entirely new to me, is a discovery. Here is a lyric-dramatic soprano who has just the steadiness and strength to encompass Senta's music and, as important, the histrionic power to convey most of the girl's obsession. As with the rest of the performance there is refreshing directness to her reading quite free of artifice or prima-donna pretensions, and she rises with only an occasional sense of not entirely inappropriate strain to the climaxes of the love duet and to the final moments of the opera as a whole Her voice has a certain raw edge to it that may put off some but seems apt in this part. Her Dutchman is better known: Alfred Muffhas been singing this part and others of the same dimension for some years in Germany, and was EMI's Barak (9/88). He may miss some of the inner tension and torment of the role, but he sings with a welcome sense of line and in a tone that is consistently firm and pleasing from start to finish—and of how many Hollanders can that be said?
Then there are two matchless tenors as Erik and the Steuermann. On no other version, or indeed performance on stage, have I heard an Erik to equal Seiffert, a tenor ever growing in stature, in voice and technical ability. For once Erik's music is not only a pleasure to hear but also sounds as Wagner surely imagined it, lyrically impassioned. Jorg Hering is a young tenor in the Ainsley and Heilmann class: he sings the youth's recollection of home and love with the utmost eloquence of tone and phrase. Knodt is a perfectly adequate Daland, but his somewhat woolly tone isn't ideal for the old sailor. The well-known Schiml is an excellent Mary with none of the wobble heard when the part is taken by super-annuated mezzos.
The recording is at once spacious and immediate although I felt the singers, especially Senta, are placed a shade backwards. This performance hasn't the epic dimension of the Klemperer, nor a Senta, in spite all her qualities, quite in the Silja class, but it surpasses all other available recordings and at the price, should be snapped up by all aspiring Wagnerians.'