The 1920s and ’30s were not kind to composers – all of Berg, Busoni, Elgar and Puccini were struck down with incomplete masterpieces on their workbench. Posthumous completions have sugared the pill. Although here, if you follow page 1 of Oehms Classics’ booklet, neither the contemporary Philipp Jarnach’s nor the 1985 Antony Beaumont’s work on Doktor Faust’s Act 3 scenes 2 and 3 have been used. The printed libretto however – we should perhaps be grateful for having one, although it’s only in German – muddies the issue by apparently printing the ‘full’ libretto (see pages 66 68 of the booklet for the ending, where you can read much that’s not heard here, including the Poet’s spoken autobiographical address to the audience).

But not too much matter. This is a masterpiece – surely one of the great after-Goethe Fausts – and a performance as well cast and conducted as this one is welcome, albeit shorn of about six minutes of viable, convincing music and the more triumphant ending for the central character which seems authentic. Wolfgang Koch, here in summer 2008, anticipates his recent summer festival triumphs in big Wagner and Strauss with a rich-toned, always text-conscious and intelligent reading of the title-role, John Daszak has both the power and the wackiness for Mephistopheles – some shades of Graham Clark’s memorable 1980s performance for ENO – and Catherine Naglestad is a seductive Duchess of Parma. In this music – it could be crudely summarised as an occasionally wrong-note Richard Strauss with more modern leanings – Tomá≈ Netopil finds the right timbres from Munich’s experienced opera orchestra, big but never over-romanticised.

So the only real question here is the edition. Nagano (from Lyons in 1997/98) gives both endings and is an essential purchase for that reason, although the cast is not as strong as here. The DG Leitner uses Jarnach’s completion and has Fischer-Dieskau in the title-role (he’s the Poet on the Nagano), another strong Munich ensemble and the same orchestra as here; this may be the best-conducted of these complete performances. Boult championed the score with all the obstinacy he brought to his promotion of Fauré and a recording of excerpts (again with Fischer-Dieskau) is on the LPO’s own label. The only current DVD recording (from Zurich) under Philippe Jordan has Thomas Hampson and Gregory Kunde, and also uses Jarnach. It seems to me a little perverse not to do the Beaumont; but if you love this opera (and you should), you’re really going to need at least two recordings.