On its first release, this 1955 recording was praised as ‘a worthy performance of the work and a well recorded one’ by Gramophone, which also commented that ‘Elisabeth Grümmer sings her solo with beautiful tone and deep feeling’ and ‘Fischer-Dieskau gives a[n] expressive and musical account of his part’. The choir and orchestra perform with measures of equal conviction, subtlety and power. Recognised as a ‘musician’s conductor’, Rudolf Kempe was an outstanding interpreter of the German classics, always obtaining beautifully lucid playing allied to clarity of rhythm and sensitive phrasing.