This New Year's Eve concert is a notable improvement on its Strauss predecessor of 1992 (Sony, 7/93)-at least as far as the singing is concerned. Cheryl Studer is heard in the two roles that brought her Wagnerian renown at Bayreuth in the 1980s. Her Greeting to the Hall of Song is as elating and sincere as it should be, sung with dignity and strength. Her Elsa, in the Act 2 encounter with Meier's scheming Ortrud, is even better, indeed a model of Wagnerian singing at its very best-lovely tone allied to refined dynamic and verbal shading, all exemplified in her sympathetic solo ''Du armste kannst wohl nie ermessen''.
Meier's voice doesn't record as well as Studer's: one notices a lack of bloom on the tone, nor does she carry quite the weight for Ortrud. She is better suited as Sieglinde, but even here one recalls many warmer-voiced, more eager interpreters, Lehmann, Muller, Reining and Rysanek among them, not to forget Studer herself. Jerusalem's Siegmund is well-known from Bayreuth broadcasts and from the Janowski set. Regrettably what it has gained in dramatic conviction it has lost in tonal sheen since he assumed the mantle of Siegfried, but it remains among the best of the day.
The great discovery here, although not an unexpected one, is Terfel as a Wagnerian bass-baritone confirming all one dared hope of him in this field. His reading of Wolfram's song to the evening star, with an almost ideal welding of tone, line and words, deserves to be equated with those of, say, Husch and Fischer-Dieskau. This is deeply expressive, wholly natural singing of an artist coming into his prime. Terfel also has the ideal voice in weight and timbre for Sachs, one made for the part and the variety of colour and dynamics he brings to the Act 2 monologue is already remarkable. I sincerely hope he tackles this role before he essays the more dramatic Wotan.
Unfortunately he is placed too far behind the orchestra-the photo on the box shows the singers on high pedestals behind the players. Abbado is too intrusive in accompanying his singers. On his own he conducts a generalized account of the Tannhauser Overture, while the Prelude to Meistersinger is overblown, ponderous and slow, nowhere a match for such as Furtwangler, Karajan or Beecham. The Ride of the Valkyries is forceful to the point of vulgarity. On this evidence I have no wish to hear Abbado in a Wagner opera any more than in one by Richard Strauss. Under him the Berlin Philharmonic appears to have become as brash as the worst American virtuoso orchestra. How distressing.'