This noted 1973 set hasn’t worn that well. Kleiber draws superb playing from the Dresden orchestra and singing from the Leipzig Radio Chorus, but he is inclined to kill the score with kindness through exaggerated tempos and overemphasis on detail. Then there is the inevitable drawback of actors speaking for the singers and not sounding like their counterparts. Janowitz’s Agathe is pure-voiced and offers perfectly weighted phrases but remains curiously uninvolving. Schreier is a rather hard-voiced but stylish Max, Mathis an eager but slightly self-conscious Aennchen, Adam a petulant rather than devilish Caspar. By and large, the 1960 Jochum set, if you can find it in DG’s Double series (12/94 – nla), is a tauter, more evenly cast bargain.'