This recording has been available for some time in other transfers
but the present issue derives from restorations by Andrew Rose
for Pristine Audio in 2008 and Aaron Z Snyder in 2010. I have
not heard the earlier versions so that I cannot compare them,
but the results on the present disc certainly sound remarkably
good for their date - much better than many live recordings
from ten or even twenty years later - especially bearing in
mind the notoriously difficult acoustic of the Albert Hall as
it was at that time. The result is that one can concentrate
on the performance without too many distractions. Admittedly
there are some remaining problems. The balance is at times odd,
with the timpani very prominent, the first violins are apt to
disappear unpredictably into the distance, and there are moments
of severe congestion, but there is nothing here that seriously
obtrudes in listening to the performance. It does help to be
able to imagine what is missing at times and to have an idea
of what the live balance would be, but this is clearly an issue
to appeal essentially to those who know the work well already
so that this should not be too much of a problem.
I find it difficult to imagine concert life in London so soon
after the war in a city dominated in my childhood memory by
bomb sites and shortages. It is a pity that the brief notes
in the booklet do not mention what else was on the programme
for this concert or say anything else about its context but
what matters is the performance itself. It is powerful and energetic
- not words I would use about Walter’s later recordings
but very obviously in the same exciting vein as the superb Met
Fidelio of 1941 that Naxos reissued some years ago. The
first movement is fierce rather than mysterious - possibly the
recording has something to do with this - and the second very
lively, if short on repeats. The wonderful lyrical approach
to the slow movement leads to a finale that for once seems to
be treated as a whole rather than a series of short sections
and to lead inexorably towards the final release of energy at
the close.
This is a live performance and not everything is perfect. To
my surprise Heddle Nash sounded effortful at first whereas William
Parsons, despite a somewhat dry tone, is much better than I
had expected. The two ladies meet most of the formidable requirements
of their roles as well as you would expect - a pity that there
is so little of them. The choir are also very good and I imagine
that occasional indistinctness to be the result of the recording
and the hall rather than their performance. The orchestra are
generally good despite some occasional faults of intonation
and ensemble. If anything these add to the excitement of the
occasion. The audience are allowed some brief applause at the
end and provide a few coughs and other noises during the music
but these are not too obtrusive.
All in all this is an issue which will appeal to any admirer
of the conductor or to listeners wanting to hear a performance
of the Choral which stands somewhere between his great contemporaries
Toscanini and Furtwängler. This is certainly not for anyone
without a more modern and better recorded version of the Symphony
in their collection but it is very well worth hearing for its
own merits and as an instructive comparison with the modern
mainstream of historically informed performance.
John Sheppard
Isobel Baillie (soprano); Kathleen Ferrier (contralto); Heddle Nash
(tenor); William Parsons (baritone) 
