In the second, released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon in 1994, she performed a more nearly complete, English-language version of the score with Kathleen Battle, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa and the actor Judi Dench, who contributed passages of narration between Mendelssohn's musical numbers.

[1] The cover of the album was designed under the art direction of J. J. Stelmach, and features a previously unpublished painting by Arthur Rackham held in the collection of Mr and Mrs Michael Loeb of New York City.

[1] Edward Greenfield reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in October 1978, comparing it with earlier versions conducted by Otto Klemperer,[3] André Previn[4] and Raymond Leppard.

A more conspicuous feature of Ormandy's disc was that its soloists' and chorus's contributions were sung in German translations of William Shakespeare's verse rather than, as was customary, in the playwright's own, English words.

The new album was exquisitely engineered, delivering "glorious sound recorded fully and richly with plenty of inner detail", but all in all, Previn's and Leppard's discs were marginally preferable.

"Interpretatively, Ormandy scores consistently," he wrote, "...whether in the mystery of the fairy music, ... the natural, unforced sweetness of the slow coda of the Overture or the lightness of pointing in the Scherzo.

"[7] In an article about classical music's basic repertoire that he contributed to Stereo Review in November 1983, Richard Freed praised Eugene Ormandy's album as even better than a "much-admired, nearly complete recording conducted by Peter Maag".

[10] In 1985, RCA Victor Red Seal issued the album on CD (catalogue number RD 82084), with a 16-page insert booklet including notes by Jay David Saks and George R. Marek in English, French and German but no photographs, artist biographies, texts or translations.