see PDF for full review

Any seasoned collector who scours specialist classical
shops or departments will know that historical broadcast recordings are cropping up in all sorts of guises,
mostly cheap poor-sounding and inaccurately annotated. Which is why I would advise taking particular note
of the super-budget Guild Historical label.
Like andante.com, Guild has gone out of its way to
secure top-quality source material and commission first
rate booklet-notes. The initial release bodes extremely
well. Arthur Bodanzky's hugely vital January 1937
Siegfried (previously on Music & Arts CD 696) with a
prime-condition Lauritz Melchior in the title-role and
the young Kirsten Flagstad as Brünnhilde is the best
possible advertisement for listening to pre-war live
Wagner from the Met.
With such Wagnerian stalwarts as Fiedrich Schorr as
the Wanderer, Kerstin Thorborg as Erda, Emanuel List
as Fafner, not to mention Karl Laufköter's vivid Mime
and Eduard Habich's Albrecht, high-quality characterisations are guaranteed. Richard Caniell’s informed
booklet-notes are a joy to read, (our own John Steane
is often quoted at length) and we're additionally
offered synopses, full biographies and detailed information on sound and sources (which incidentally are
first-hand, not copies).
By coincidence, just prior to sampling Guild's Siegfried,
the distributor ‘One for You’ sent me Archipel's superbudget three disc edition of Bodansky's Die Walküre,
most of which emanates from the same season (the
First Act is from 1935).
The contrast with Archipel's draconian noise-reduction and skimpy production values is striking, though
collectors may well want the 1935 material and bonuses (including 'extras' from Act 2). My advice is to wait
for the completely re-mastered Guild edition (the
whole of the Ring is scheduled for release), which I'm
assuming will center on the 1937 performances.
Guild's initial trawl also includes Melchior and
Flagstad in Act 2 of Parsifal, forcefully conducted by
Erich Leinsdorf at the Met on Good Friday 1938
(there's also the closing scene of Act 3 with an
unnamed chorus and orchestra) A 1943 Met Le Nozze
di Figaro stars Enzio Pinza, Bidú Sayão, Jarmila
Novotna, John Brownlee, Eleanor Steber and
Salvatore Baccaloni (sounds as good as it looks!) and
there is 70 minutes worth of a live 1928 Boris Godunov
from Covent Garden with Chaliapin in the title-role.
Rob Cowan
March 2002