Karajan has recorded the German Requiem four times. The freshest and most radiant account was his first, made in Vienna in 1947 with Hans Hotter and the young Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, this was said to have been one of Toscanini's favourite records and will soon appear on CD on EMI's French References label. The 1964 Berlin performance (nla) was more mannered, with less immediate choral sound, but it had as a special lure Gundula Janowitz as soloist in the fifth movement. This third, 1976 performance was criticized by Trevor Harvey for the excessive range of dynamic levels in performance and recording, and for passages of singing and playing that are unduly humid. l was not too much troubled by the dynamic range, which is more or less what we expect nowadays on CD; and whilst some passages do verge on the sanctimonious, always a problem with this work, I was surprised how clear and musicianly the treatment of many of the work's notorious cruxes is. Van Dam grows into the role and Tomowa-Sintow is fresh-sounding and lyrical in her solo, superior by far to Barbara Hendricks on Karajan's 1983 DG re-make ( 410 521-2GH2, 1/86). Certainly this is a record that, at midprice, should get on to any CD short-list, but I would not put it ahead of the Klemperer EMI ( CDC7 47238-2, 6/87) which is really in a class of its own.'