I think this may have been the first time Die Walküre had been performed in Vienna since the destruction of the opera house ten years earlier. Karajan assembled a magnificent cast and they all deliver (look at the names of those Walküren!). His interpretation is less self-indulgent than it became ten years later in Salzburg. He had singers with strong personalities who had their own ideas about these characters and were not inclined to worship at the Karajan altar. I won't discuss the performance at length because it's as good as you think it will be. The sound is listenable, but mediocre. I wish someone would remaster it with the special attention to pitch it deserves and eliminate the pops, clicks, and tape hiss in the bargain. Towards the end of Wotan's long monologue in Act Two there is a bad patch of about two minutes where some file corruption or a flawed master disturbs the listening experience. Any Wagnerite who loves historic performances of his works should have this recording. Hopefully someone, some day will remaster it so that its glories can shine through more effectively.

Hard to beat. Sadly, I had left Europe the year before, but not before hearing Vienna's fab quintet (Nilsson/Rysanek/Hotter/Frick/von Karajan) many times. Surely they were the true post-war golden age. Hotter (wobble and all) simply owns the role of Wotan. What command and total understanding! Nilsson is about to enter her prime and throws off the role's many challenges with sublime ease. ,At the time, she had only one real challenger...Astrid Varnay. Rysanek, as always, is a force of nature; it's a delight to hear her cut loose and let the rafters ring. Suthaus and Windgassen tossed the Wagner young'uns back and forth like ping pong balls. But waiting in the wings....Vickers.Frick was a rarity...a true honest-to-goodness basso. His big, dark voice suited his roles and, here, he commands your attention throughout Act 1, as he should do. You can only hear his death in Act 2, but to see it was spine-tingling. And now we come to Act 3: from Wotan's entrance to the end, we are treated to a Wagnerian master class with two of the greatest leaving an audio gift that, as I said at the beginning, is hard to beat.

ganz gut

wonderful performance with the best Wagner singers of this age and with Karajan in his prime

Did Nilsson ever place a trill in the war-cry?