It is good to see the Heldentenor of the century remembered in his centenary year, having said which I fear that my immediate part in the festivities must be to draw some other records to attention. For instance: this one starts with the Tannhauser Narration and it could not do better than that as far as the selection is concerned, but the transfer here is underpowered and dull-edged compared with the version on EMI ((CD) CDH7 69789-2, 10/89), which also contains three of the best excerpts from Siegfried, again in more sharply defined sound than on the Claremont issue. For anyone wanting more than that, I would have thought that they would prefer to have the complete performance available in the Danish Melchior Edition (Vol. 5—Danacord/Conifer (CD) DACOCD319) which as a bonus has the remarkable seventieth-birthday performance of the First Act of Die Walkure in 1960.
There is a rationale in the present disc, and that is to concentrate upon Melchior's association with Albert Coates (the bonus here being an excellent account of the Funeral music in Gotterdammerung, remarkably well recorded too). Addictive readers of the old HMV catalogues will remember that there was a five-record album with excerpts from all three acts of Siegfried, later shuffled in among other sequences with other conductors and three Wotans (Friedrich Schorr, Emil Schipper and the one heard here at his best, Rudolf Bockelmann). They were on those dark brown labels which usually had such crackly surfaces that one came to be wary of them in the second-hand piles. Here they have been cleaned up very effectively, and if there is not that sharpness of detail which reminds one of a brightly restored painting I daresay that some listeners will find the familiar mellowness preferable. And if, despite having had the alternatives drawn to attention, they persist in an interest in this issue they will certainly find the Heldentenor in magnificent form; imaginative as well as tireless, and not merely powerful but sensitive too.'