Anyone wanting a recording of Gurrelieder on their shelves but reluctant to pay full price for Chailly’s or Sinopoli’s readings will find that this has a lot in its favour. A satisfying sense, for a start, that the vast forces Schoenberg calls for are all there: the chorus is big, the orchestra huge and the expanded brass section (there should be 25 players) makes a magnificently rich sound. And Kegel and the recording engineers between them ensure that very little detail is obscured. In the role of Tove, all-important in Act 1, Bundschuh is splendid: she has the Wagnerian amplitude the music needs (she is especially good in the huge phrases of her fourth aria) but unlike many such voices hers retains its beauty in quiet singing. Lang seems at first a little light-voiced for the Wood Dove’s lament, but she opens out finely, and although not as movingly expressive as Chailly’s Brigitte Fassbaender (no one is, in my experience) her eloquence at the end is affecting. Cold is more concerned to act than to sing the Peasant, but Appel is an excellent character-tenor Klaus-Narr. Westphal lacks the vocal grandeur that the Speaker’s role ideally needs.
Manfred Jung as Waldemar has all the notes the part demands, even making a fair shot at those very low ones that embarrass most tenors. His voice, however, is very hard and he sings both loudly and with a guttural vehemence that robs the character of anything like ardour. Kegel’s tempos are decidedly slow: he takes 20 (!) minutes longer over the piece than Chailly, eight minutes longer than Sinopoli. As a consequence the music lumbers at times and, despite Bundschuh’s efforts, the heady passions of Part 1 only fitfully ignite. The otherwise admirable clarity of the recording, made in 1986, shows up a few imprecisions of ensemble and one or two extraneous noises. The accompanying booklet, by the way, provides no translation of the sung text. Chailly remains my first recommendation, for his combination of passion and meticulous precision and, not least, for his uniformly fine soloists. Sinopoli’s sheer voluptuousness of sound makes his account a very close second.'