This is a curate’s egg of a volume, the good bits very good indeed, the rest indifferent in either musical content or execution. The most desirable excerpts – would that they were more extensive! – are from Capriccio, the first Vienna performance, and Palestrina. The four extracts from Richard Strauss’s last opera give us aggravatingly short glimpses of Cebotari’s Madeleine. From what is vouchsafed us it is obvious that she must have been ideal in the part – radiant tone, unaffected phrasing, beautifully judged portamento. Schoeffler is predictably articulate in the major part of La Roche’s monologue, but his vocal grammar tends to be a shade choppy. Noni and Wenkoff are excellent as the Italian singers and Bohm conducts as to the manner born.
Josef Witt, a much underrated tenor, proves an infinitely touching Palestrina in largish chunks from the end of Act 1 of Pfitzner’s work. He was famous in the role in Vienna and is part of the tradition that runs from Erb through Patzak to Schreier. Witt’s plangent tenor and sensitive feeling for Palestrina’s inner soul is most moving. Hotter is heard in what must have been his first Borromeo, singing with tremendous vitality and security. Later he brought even greater insights to the long part. Moralt seems in total command of the score’s leisurely phraseology.
Compared with the rest, Prince Igor, in German and in inferior sound, is a mixed blessing. Still, this is historical in being the State Opera’s first staging of the work and notable for Schoeffler’s fine account of Igor’s aria and Helena Braun’s finely shaded, involving Yaroslavna, complete with ravishing pianissimos. Though the traditional cut is made, Vladimir’s cavatina is sung with fresh, open and romantic accents by Dermota – and it is Dermota, not Patzak as the compiler/note-writer seems to think, who offers a lovely account of Ferrando’s arias from a 1941 Cosi fan tutte.
For the rest, there are unsatisfactory extracts from the first Viennese Carmina Burana, or at least from its dress rehearsal, and from Egk’s tedious Columbus – and from one of his ballets.'