When Die Walküre is conducted like this there is no greater Wagner opera. It’s hard to beat the ending of Act III under almost any circumstances but when it goes beyond the usual tear-jerking on the part of great singers and becomes an all encompassing cosmic experience it becomes something else. So much for Wolfgang Sawallisch being dismissed by the English critics for years as a mere competent kapellmeister.If you only need one reason to add this recording to your already stuffed Wagner library Wolfgang Sawallisch is it.The cast is superb, into the bargain. The star is James King! His “Wälse!… Wälse! at the end of Act I is amazing. No one in my experience has held those notes as long and powerfully, nothing show-boating about it but completely at the service of the moment. He has done many fabulous recordings but this takes the cake. Hildegard Behrens is a lovely Sieglinde. The soft vulnerable type, beautifully sung.I prefer more ferile Sieglindes, like Julia Varády on the Sawallisch cycle on EMI 12 years later, but the softer type Sieglinde when sung as beautiful at Behrens’ and they are not just simpering victims, like Karajan’s Janowitz on his DG set is a delight to the ear.Fassbaender is a marvelously goddess-like Fricka, truly a fractal of the Asautru goddess Frigge. Kurt Böhme’s Hunding is surprisingly young sounding and virile.Gwyneth Jones and Theo Adam are also marvelous. They are let-down slightly by the staging which places them, him especially, too up stage, which mutes his astonishing domination of the implacable god, the same happens to her in the Todesverkundigung in Act 2, But her delivery of this amazing part is mysterious and solemn sung with great beauty of tone. I would say that the sound runs from great to ok. This recording deserves a professional remastering and release commercially and you’d have a classic of the gramophone.Aside from these caveats, as it stands, this is a great performance of Sawallisch pulls off one of those rare feats in Wagner. Magic.Highly recommended.

This performance was given nearly a year after the one with Nilsson as Brünnhilde (OD #11975) and shares a number of its virtues: strong cast, excellent conducting, mostly good sound. The "mostly" is because this sounds like it was recorded the same way the earlier performance was through the house system or with a tape recorder hidden backstage. The voices are very present and in good balance with the orchestra - until someone moves out of mic range (probably upstage) and then their voices become quite recessed. This happens to Böhme as Hunding in the first act and Jones during all of the Todesverkündigung. These recessed parts correspond to the exact moments in the earlier performance although this one is a little bit clearer. It may not be so pronounced if one uses headphones (I didn't).At any rate, this is a superb performance. Jones is more shrill of voice than she usually was at this point in her career (and strangely a little under pitch in some of her Ho-jo-to-ho high notes), but her trills are splendid and she has already developed a keen sense of who this character is. Behrens is a lovely Sieglinde and King a superb Siegmund (he holds out his "Wälse"s for quite a long time). Fassbaender is a fiery, almost frightening Fricka; she is captured here in her vocal prime too. Adam is a convincing Wotan with superb diction. Sawallisch leads a whale of a performance.Even with my reservations about the sound, this is worth having.

A great moment of wagnerism! A must!

A great addition to my collection