In Act 2, we again lose Scene 1, between Isolde and Brangäne, along with the short but delicious orchestral introduction. The rest of the first half of the act is studio-derived, and from a justly famous source, the Leider/Melchior Liebesnacht recorded by EMI IN 1929. This embraces everything from the great orchestral crash after Isolde extinguishes the torch to the end of the duet, though with the then-standard gouge all the way from Isolde’s “bot ich dem Tage Trutz!” to her “Doch es rächte sich der verscheuchte Tag,” thus eliminating most of the exploration of the qualities and meanings of the light and the day. (We miss more of Melchior than of Leider here.)^(I) Then, from the coming-together of the lovers, the recording plays straight through to the end of the act, though with the house cuts that prevailed at the time, mainly a sizable chunk of Marke’s “Tatest du’s wirklich?” and Isolde’s response to Tristan’s “O König.” However, since the EMI Liebesnacht itself has an important internal redaction (Brangäne’s Warning), it is filled out with another interpolation, a 1928 version of the Warning sung by Emmi Leisner. At first I had difficulty believing that this was Leisner, whose voice I’ve heard with fair frequency over the years: her vibrato is uncharacteristically suppressed much of the time, and some of the sustained sounds are closer to phonemes than recognizable vowels—altogether, a different impression than that of her acoustical recording of this solo. On re-hearing, I think I can accept that it is Leisner singing, possibly with her tone somewhat altered through the matching process? It does make a hypnotic effect, and is perfectly joined to the surrounding material. Leisner aside and the big cut aside, this Liebesnacht presents a unique coming together of voices,  personalities, and temperaments that for some of us make it the most cherishable (I didn’t say “the best”) of all the recorded versions. For nearly twenty years, its only real competition was the 1940 Victor recording with Melchior, Flagstad, and the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Edwin MacArthur, which solved the redaction problem by not starting till “O sink hernieder” and the Brangäne’s Warning problem by having the Isolde sing it, beautifully, at a distance. No one will want to dispense with this, for the sake of those two great voices and the presence of its mono sonics. But if one is listening for the Tristan, then the Melchior of ’29, though he brings no greater sheer tonal glory than the Melchior of ’40, does bring a greater pliancy of line and control of the softer dynamics (the heady mix needed in the passaggio area readier to respond). If it’s the Isolde that’s commanding attention, then there’s Leider’s way with the weaving line and her intimacy of expression (she scrambles a bit in the breathless opening, nailing one C, indicating the other, being only ein Mensch, ein Sänger). Listening for the two together, there is here a thrilling eagerness, a hunger, at the outset, and afterward an ease of give and take, of mutual understanding, that the Melchior/Flagstad and Melchior/Traubel duos never quite established. Finally, though I think MacArthur and his SFS are not quite as bad as sometimes made out, there’s no question of the superiority of Coates with his two patrician orchestras. I mustn’t fail to put in a plug, as I have in the past, for the musically complete and reverently sung and played 1947 Liebesnacht with Traubel, Torsten Ralf, and Herta Glaz (Brangäne), with Fritz Busch conducting the Met’s orchestra in the acoustic of the house. That’s a beauty.