Classical: The Compact Collection: ROB COWAN ON THE WEEK'S CD RELEASES

IT'S ALL too easy to think of Debussy's operatic masterpiece Pelleas et Melisande as a huge tone poem with voices. Indeed, listening to Herbert von Karajan's 1978 Berlin recording makes it almost impossible to experience the work in any other way. Karajan charts the music's ebb and flow much as he does for Debussy's symphonic sketches La Mer, attending with particular care to the dramatic inter-linking orchestral interludes. Wagner's Tristan and Parsifal are in constant attendance, and the singers fit the grid like additional instruments. Richard Stilwell is an impassioned Pelleas and Jose van Dam a commanding though deeply troubled Golaud. Best, aside from Karajan himself, is Frederica von Stade, a more knowing Melisande than most, though unapproachably tender in her death scene.

In Richard Osborne's booklet superb note she relates how, at a key passage in the Fourth Act, Pelleas reacts to Melisande's confession of love with "The ice has been broken with red hot irons" and how Karajan troubled repeatedly over responding high string lines. "And then the strings got exactly what he wanted," says von Stade, "and it was like seeing your child take his first step without falling over." If you want to check the moment for yourself, go straight to CD3, beam up track 7 and fast- forward to 5'06". You would have to go back to Roger Desormiere's wartime Pelleas (on EMI) to experience anything like it, but of course that's a pretty old recording. Karajan's is wonderfully sumptuous.

Switching to Claudio Abbado's new CD of Richard Strauss songs plays havoc with your musical expectations. For while Karajan's Debussy is darkly Wagnerian and candidly emotive, Abbado's Strauss favours delicate detail and textural transparency. This is "chamber music" Strauss, supple and contained, and Abbado has the ideal collaborator in soprano Karita Mattila. "Freundliche Vision" wafts in almost imperceptibly, whereas the expansive "Verfuhring" celebrates "the god of life" that rules the world while Zarathustra wanders close by. Some may find the Four Last Songs overly refined, even a trifle cool, but for this listener, Mattila and Abbado respect the Mozartean aesthetic that was central to Strauss's art. "Im Abendrot" is especially memorable.

Time is in virtual suspension for Wagner's Gotterdammerung in a fabled recording taped live at the post-war reopening of Bayreuth. The Testament label fought long and hard to realise this prestigious "first release", but it has been worth the wait. Astrid Varnay sings Brunnhilde and Bernd Aldenhoff Siegfried (his overall approach is reminiscent of Jon Vickers), with a full supporting cast under the kingly baton of Hans Knappertsbusch.

Following the chain of events from a lusty though laid-back "Rhine Journey", through Hagen's summoning of the vassals, to an unbearably intense "funeral music" and a grandly protracted - and tragically conclusive - "Immolation" is to share an experience that must have been quite overwhelming in the hall.

There are now four "Kna" Gotterdammerungs on the current CD market (two in the context of complete Ring cycles), but this is easily the best of them, and the sound is remarkably lifelike.

Debussy/Karajan EMI CMS5 67057 2 (three discs)

Strauss/Mattila, Abbado Deutsche Grammophon 445 182-2

Wagner/Knappertsbusch Testament SBT 4175 (four discs)