The Music and Arts complete set puts me into something of a quandary for more than one reason. In general this is a thrillingly sung and played reading, one that every Wagnerian should hear and want to own, in spite of momentary lapses in accuracy. Leinsdorf, who had just taken over the Wagnerian wing of the repertory at the Metropolitan in 1940 from the recently deceased Bodanzky, directs an intense, swift, well-played, finely shaped performance, one in the mould of Beecham, Bohm or Carlos Kleiber rather than Furtwangler, Goodall or Bernstein. The Met orchestra of the day delivers the great piece with assurance and passion, especially the strings (listen to the Act 3 Prelude). And Flagstad and Melchior are both in as superb form as on any commercial or 'unofficial' recordings of the complete work or excerpts. They both sing in full-toned, tireless and sensitive fashion throughout in a way unequalled in this opera perhaps before or since.
So what makes me hesitate in my recommendation? Mainly the quality of the sound. Readers will know that I can tolerate most inadequacies, but here the continuous crackle, the occasional drop-outs and faint echoes of other radio stations do seriously detract from one's enjoyment. On the other hand, the voices ring out truly and with very little distortion except when occasionally masked by the forward placing of the orchestra. Music and Arts, admittedly, make clear their recording's deficiencies, but surely their tapes could have been cleared up by using the computers and de-clicking machines now available. However, apart from the sound, you have to bear with disfiguring cuts from the love scene and from Tristan's Act 3 monologue. Then Emanuel List's Marke, for all its sensitivity of phrase, finds the singer unsteady, rather past his best. Thorborg is a vital, concerned, steady Brangane, Huehn a secure, pleasing Kurwenal. What may make you want to wait is the release by EMI later this year of the 1937 Covent Garden performance under Beecham with a similar cast, but a better Marke and sound (which I have sampled); a great improvement on what's to be gleaned here.
From hearing the old 'unofficial' issue on LP of that Beecham reading, I would judge that Flagstad and Melchior are there in almost as excellent form, though I have not encountered Melchoir anywhere else in such wonderful voice or so willing to obey dynamic indications. He, more than Flagstad, responds eagerly to the text, divines its inner meaning and projects it on the most unforced, steady stream of tone imaginable. In Flagstad's performance there is a sense of timeless beauty and velvet warmth but not always quite the commitment her partner brings to his part throughout. Listen to him in the slow section of the love duet, in his appeal to Isolde after Marke's narration (where he remains unsurpassed) and in what's left of his Act 3 scene, where he searingly conveys Tristan's suffering and inner torment—''Wie sie selig'' particularly (though the pitch of the orchestra, as recorded, wavers here). This is perhaps the best sung and enacted Tristan on disc.
He is certainly in superior form to that shown two years later on the CBS disc, one of the first—in its LP form—that I reviewed for Gramophone (in November 1969). I pointed out then that Melchior here sounds very baritonal, the voice only clearing late in the extract from Act 3. Without the stimulus of the theatre he seems less inspired to give of his best, though even at this late stage in his career he is still an appreciable Tristan. Leinsdorf is again the conductor (in the lion's share of the excerpts), directing at a lower emotional temperature unhelped by an orchestra more backward than on the off-the-air set. Indeed, the recording is generally uncomfortable and boxy with reverberation added at some stage. Janssen is a sympathetic but somewhat unfocused Kurwenal. If you want simply Tristan's Act 2 reply to Marke you'll do better with Melchior's much earlier HMV version now transferred to CD (EMI (CD) CDH7 69789-2, 10/89).
The Traubel contribution is another matter. Flagstad's wartime replacement at the Met, she is none too well represented on disc. Even without a Brangane, she manages to generate much tension as Isolde, giving a fiery account of the Narration. The Liebestod is sung with glowing tone but in too extrovert a fashion—no match for Flagstad on the complete set. The recording is rather better than on the Melchior portion of this issue.'