This is a Fidelio that approaches the work very much from the Singspiel standpoint. There is no attempt at romantic heroics or at inflating the opera into a universal message. I never felt uplifted by the performance, but by the same token I never felt it failed at any significant juncture. Masur is far too experienced a Beethoven interpreter for that to happen. I just felt that if he had had this cast in the theatre, he would have inspired his singers to go beyond the very acceptable level of their achievement to something that would have challenged the hegemony of those listed above. When the set was recorded in 1982 the main participants were perhaps not quite experienced enough either in their roles or in the studio to bring the drama wholly to life. Having written that, I see that my view was exactly the same when the set was first transferred to CD and reviewed as a full-price issue in September 1985. In 1982, when it was released on LP, the late William Mann was rather more enthusiastic.
Altmeyer sings with often thrilling tone and a close attention to what the score requires, but she articulates the text with little of the insight into its meaning achieved by Ludwig for Klemperer (EMI) and to lesser extent Janowitz for Bernstein (DG). With them you feel the inner fires burning strongly; with Altmeyer, the expression is too generalized. It's the same with Jerusalem's Florestan. You will look far to find his aria of anguish and vision sung with such healthy, steady tone, but the feeling behind the notes is too often blank. I doubt if that would be the case today. Nimsgern is a vital, properly aggressive Pizarro, but also a slightly wild one. As Don Fernando, Theo Adam shows what can be made of music and text. Peter Meven likewise shows his experience with a warm, fatherly, keenly pointed Rocco. The Marzelline is an uninteresting, thin-voiced singer, Wohlers is a more-than-adequate Jaquino.
Real quality comes in the finely wrought but never overheated orchestral playing of the Gewandhaus and the superb singing of the Leipzig and Berlin Radio choruses, firm in tone, translucent in texture, unanimous in accent. For that Masur is to be thanked. They are backed by perhaps the most successfully engineered recording yet for this work. A drawback is the severe cutting of the dialogue. Most serious is the omission of the crucial intervention of Jaquino announcing the Minister's arrival, with its relieved answer from Rocco, just before the concluding section of the Dungeon quartet. The booklet hasn't caught up with the fact that the set has now been fitted on to two, rather than three, discs.'