This, one of the most desirable discs in the whole recorded history of the opera, has led a Cinderella existence since it first appeared 32 years ago. Now invited to the ball it ought to be accorded status as a princess.
Crespin, quite heart-rending as the Marschallin, is in pristine voice, unlike in her complete recording (Decca, 3/87). A year or so before this recording was made I heard her in the role at Covent Garden, and at the close of Act 1 I was literally in tears, so moving was her utterance. Listening to her here, I can well imagine how I reacted so. In ravishing voice, she fills her music with silvery, sensuous tone and at the same time judges every note, every phrase to perfection, whether in the monologue, or the final scenes of Acts 1 and 3. If you don’t believe me, listen to track 2 from around 11'30'' in, the long solo starting “Die Zeit im Grunde”, so graciously and effortlessly voiced, or to the single phrase “Und fur die Blasse weiss vielleicht mein Vetter die Medizin”, before the great trio, where the Innigkeit and tenderness in Crespin’s tone, at once knowing and sympathetic, is quite wonderful. Then at the start of the trio itself, the high A and B are sung with ideal steadiness and poise in a half-voice.
These extracts benefit from having, as Strauss intended, a soprano Octavian – and what a soprano! Soderstrom’s vibrant, impassioned singing is just what the role calls for, rather than the big, blowzy mezzo tone we have become accustomed to, so that, around G and G sharp where a lot of the part lies, she experiences none of the strain found in the performances of some mezzos. Together she and Crespin make the close of Act 1 a thing to savour. Then in the Silver Rose Presentation she is joined by Gueden still able in her late-forties to float Sophie’s high-lying phrases as to the manner born, while in the last act Gueden finds just the right sense of embarrassment in the presence of the Marschallin.
It is a thousand pities the opera was not recorded complete, not least because Varviso, as at those Covent Garden performances, is in his absolute element, elegant and ardent, finding an idiomatic Straussian ebb and flow with the Vienna Philharmonic on rapturous form, all recorded with the high craft of Decca in the 1960s. The producer, Christopher Raeburn, here provides the notes, filling in the plot as well as he can in the absence of texts and translations. At budget price, this is a must for all Straussians.'