Not for the first time is reappearance on CD a mixed blessing. With the singers that much closer to you than on LP it is all the easier to notice that Fischer-Dieskau's powerful dramatic sense leads him at times into coarse over-acting, that Varady's French is far from idiomatic and that both of them are very forwardly placed in relationship to the orchestra (one notices this all the more since Wenkel, in the Tsvetayeva songs, is in a much more natural perspective). And I am beginning to have second thought about the wisdom of singing the poems of the Fourteenth Symphony in the original languages instead of the Russian translations that Shostakovich set. The idea had the composer's sanction, but it does alter note-values and the coinciding of musical and poetic images quite a bit. Still, this is carping: Haitink's performance is a vivid one and seems all the more so for the crisp precision with which instrumental timbres are realized on CD; the deeply moving Tsvetayeva songs are a generous bonus. But you will need to tinker with the volume control if Varady and Fischer-Dieskau are not to blast you out of your seat.'