The Decca engineers have done it again. Here is a more truthful, realistic acoustic than that we have heard on our older pressings of this opera. I was once again astonished at the exciting, full sound that I heard emerging from my loud-speakers. However, that enthusiasm is somewhat tempered by various factors. In spite of all their ingenuity, the Decca re-mastering team haven't recording balance, with the orchestra given an undue prominence such as you would never hear in the opera house; you only have to listen to the rival Eurodisc/Janowski version to hear how much closer that comes to a fair and natural balance, but on its own terms the Decca is now more immediate than ever.
I suppose that only goes to emphasize the extreme difference between the two interpretations. Solti is here at his most febrile and extrovert, very much living for the, admittedly, extremely exciting moments (listen to all the bulges in the reading in the Siegfried/Wanderer encounter). Janowski offers, a lighter, less histrionic, and more consistently shaped reading. Nor, in this case, are all Solti's singers superior to Janowski's. Nevertheless, he has the still great and imperious Hotter as Wanderer, an indisputable asset—the beauty and authority of his singing throughout outstrips Adam's intelligently conceived but more mundane Wanderer. He also has the immensely experienced and often inspired Windgassen as Siegfried, but the younger Kollo, with a not dissimilar voice, sounds inevitably the fresher; both are equally poetic in Forest Murmurs. Schreier's straightforward yet fully characterized Mime is much to be preferred to Solti's Stolze, with his cackling Sprechgesang. But the preference is all the other way, not unnaturally, with the Brunnhildes, Altmeyer is simply no match for the glorious Nilsson, then at the height of her powers; with Windgassen at his best, the final duet receives probably its most thrilling performance on record.
Whatever one's individual reaction to conductor or cast, this Decca set—more economically contained on four CDs as against Eurodisc's five—is an experience younger Wagnerians will want to sample for themselves. As Siegfried breaks through to the mountain top, the orchestral sound is quite overwhelming; the VPO is in tremendous form, the recording all-engrossing as now heard. How wonderful to hear The Ring on record without a trace of distortion! The LP version is now complete on four (rather than five) records; the cassette version is on the same number of tapes.'