Here is another historic document of importance, made available as a result of the opening of the radio archives in what used to be the Communist East. In 1942, Clemens Krauss took over the direction of the Salzburg Festival and, against wartime odds, managed to present Figaro and Arabella. His reading of the Mozart proves once again that conductors of that time knew a thing or two about performing Figaro with the non-romantic verve and speed now attached to period-instrument readings. This is a no-nonsense, direct, unvarnished, unsentimental interpretation based on taut rhythms, swift tempos, slim orchestral textures and the use of a harpsichord in recitatives (it is also the only representation of Krauss in a Mozart opera).
The dramatic dynamic of the action is exemplified in the fierce attack and almost breathless pace of the Countess/Count duet in Act 2 – but then this has the advantage of the 33-year-old Hotter’s overwhelming Almaviva, a dominating, libido-driven, forceful lord of the manor, hectoring his wife with ferocity. Yet Hotter here, and in his angry, superbly executed account of his Act 3 aria, never steps outside the bounds of Mozartian style; and he is just as convincing in his subtle wooing of Susanna, fining down his voice to a suave mezza voce and reacting vividly to her equivocal responses to his advances. The perfection of his German diction almost reconciles one to the vernacular.
Only Kunz in his first Figaro is in Hotter’s class: nimble and attractive vocally, and obviously very much a presence on stage. Beilke sings clearly and with fresh tone, but her reading is in the Austro-German soubrettish tradition, as is Sommerschuch’s otherwise likeable Cherubino. Braun, soon to be a notable Isolde and Verdian soprano, makes a deeply felt, sensitive Countess but her singing, on occasion, is too ‘swoopy’ for Mozart. Among the smaller roles one notes the young Neidlinger (it was apparently decreed that a number of the singers had to come from Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart), already a singer to reckon with. Above all, there is a sense of a true ensemble, such as Busch achieved at Glyndebourne.
The sound has the immediacy of other broadcast recordings from this source, also the occasional distortion of the voices. In addition, one has to suffer stage noises and audience appreciation in the shape of laughter and applause. But they are well worth tolerating for Krauss’s taut, buoyant reading (much in the vein of his contemporaries, Busch and Rosbaud), for the tight ensemble and for Hotter’s nonpareil of a Count. It is a pity that, at full price, the performance could not have been fitted on to two CDs by judicious pruning of the applause. Preiser’s German notes are poor, and there is not even a translation of what has been provided.'