Testament: SBT41393

OK, so I know that January’s CD of the Month was also an opera and I do try to vary these things, but what is one to do when faced with a set that reduces you to helpless, awestruck admiration (and, I admit it, tears) by its close? This is a worthy conclusion to a magnificent cycle. As before, most of the cast, familiar from other recordings, surpass themselves here. Windgassen may be more vocally secure for Solti but nowhere else is he so tender, so moving as here. Josef Greindl is a far more saturnine, charismatic Hagen here than elsewhere. But it is Astrid Varnay who is the great revelation. - Gramophone Magazine