This performance, made during the period when Decca's Ring was in progress, has in consequence tended to be overlooked. Leinsdorf was an experienced Wagnerian, having taken over the Wagner repertory from Bodanzky at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1930s, restoring all the cuts made by his predecessor. He paces the work firmly and stamps his authority on the LSO of the day, but finds it hard to relax or to peer into the more metaphysical side of the score as would a Furtwangler or a Goodall. His reading is more to be equated with that of Levine today, having the same visceral excitement, as in the fight at the end of Act 2 and the departure of the Valkyries in Act 3. Leinsdorf also evinces an understanding of the larger paragraph; what I find missing is that extra, hard-to-describe inward quality which should in-form Wotan's Narration and his relationship with his erring daughter; it is something instinctive that cannot be learnt. George London's Wotan doesn't help. For all the security and resplendence of his singing, so like that of James Morris today, it wants the verbal understanding and subtlety of phrase brought to the role by Hotter and Bailey. Indeed, even Nilsson—in the Todesverkundigung and elsewhere—doesn't approach the insights and understanding she showed for Solti (Decca), and Bohm (Philips) some five or six years later. That said, her performance leaves many others standing in its strength of voice and intelligence of delivery. The Valkyries comprise many excellent British singers of the day.
Act 1 offers many rewards in the fervent, heroically sung Siegmund of Vickers, heard to greater advantage here than for Karajan in his complete Ring on DG, and in the imaginative, deeply felt Sieglinde of Brouwenstijn, who manages the storytelling of ''Der Manner Sippe'' as well as any Sieglinde on disc. It was also a pleasure to hear again the sonorous bass of David Ward, even if Hunding needs a more granite-like tone than he can provide (he was soon to become an appreciable Wotan). In Act 2, Rita Gorr is a powerful but unsubtle Fricka—and perhaps those epithets characterize the performance as a whole. The recording is over-resonant and not very atmospheric.'