''You are the Stolzing I have been awaiting for 40 years,'' said Karajan to Rene Kollo when he hired him for EMI's Meistersinger in 1970. A pity, then, that not a note from Nuremberg appears in this curious compilation which, with its scanty, text-less booklet, is clearly only for the well and truly converted. We hear Kollo as Tristan (the Act 3 ''Dunkt dich das?'' pressed out from deep within the subconscious), and Kollo as Siegmund (Die Walkure, Act 1 scene 3) instead.
This, though, is above all a disc in which Kollo, at 56, dares to take on the Wesendonk Lieder and two orchestral songs by Strauss. ''Im Abendrot'' is a first for the tenor voice; Peter Anders has recorded a ''Verfuhrung'', and Felix Mottl's version of the Wesendonk, which Kollo uses here, has been recorded by Lauritz Melchior.
The translucent bloom of the orchestra under Christian Thielemann serves only to expose Kollo's now fiercely unruly vibrato which, at best (in the Walkure extracts), can bring something of an exciting glimmer to the higher register; but, at worst, distorts intonation as uncomfortably as an uneven turntable did of yore. ''Der Engel'' has decidedly unsteady wings. But Kollo is better at handling the blustery opening of ''Stehe still'' where the steely core of his tenor holds things together. His artistry comes to the fore in ''Im Treibhaus''. Very slow, very spare, this performance has a staring intensity, and Kollo's almost Expressionistic definition of the words can sometimes border on Sprechgesang.
A new, eager lyrical ardour is awakened in the voice for Strauss's ''Verfuhrung'', one of the most heroically Wagnerian of all the composer's orchestral songs. And what of ''Im Abendrot''? The tenor register is surprisingly pleasing: my appetite is now whetted to hear the other three last songs by a suitable male voice. But Kollo has to sing pretty lustily in order to sustain a legato which is more leaned into than sung through; and the crucial leap up to the title's own declaration is fractured.'