Since 1968, other worthy advocates of 'period style' have been able to match, even to surpass, this pioneering reading on more than one front, but none of them has equalled the felicities of sounds and rhythms rising from the orchestra of the Concentus Musicus, flooded with colours and attuned to the urgency of the drama and the dance.

Some will object that on the vocal plane Lajos Kozma, though an Orfeo with a perfectly idiomatic timbre, cannot be justifiably equated with Nigel Rogers, the virtuoso and totally committed hero of Jürgens's version on Archiv; but the fact remains: this magically accomplished recording which, at the beginning of the exploration of the Baroque on disc, gave us the opera in its first youth and remains as fresh as when it was first made.
ROGER TELLART

L'Orfeo
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Concentus Musicus Wien , Capella Antiqua München
Lajos Kozma, Rotraud Hansman
Teldec 2292-42494-2
1968 - 107:49 min