[1] Lionel Salter reviewed the album in Gramophone in October 1979, comparing it with earlier recordings conducted by Herbert von Karajan[2] and Sir Georg Solti.

As actors, they were "very distinctive and completely inside their characters", von Stade "headstrong and boyish", Cotrubaș "gently feminine", both animating their words with emotion and meaning.

As the children's parents, Siegmund Nimsgern was "jovial" and unusually youthful sounding, Christa Ludwig somewhat shrill in her portrayal of her character's weary irritation.

Elisabeth Söderström was "the best interpreter of the [Witch that] I have ever heard", presenting a "picture of crazy malevolence" not by "the constant hamminess to which others resort" but by "touches of caricature allied to odious wheedling and horrid glee".

CBS's engineering was almost perfect, with voices and instruments ideally balanced and the illusion of a theatrical performance convincingly maintained - such technical challenges as a cuckoo, echo effects, spilling milk and the father's approach to his home were all negotiated satisfactorily.

Frederica von Stade and Ileana Cotrubaș, he wrote, offered the most "ear-caressing concord of female voices in one opera" that he had heard for twenty years.

Kiri Te Kanawa was "ravishing" as the Sandman, and as the Dew Fairy, Ruth Welting provided "another impressive display of the high-flying, ethereal 'fairy music' that seems to be her speciality".

[7] Frederica von Stade and Ileana Cotrubaș characterized the children "delicately", he wrote, conveying "freshness and childish innocence" with technique of the utmost expertise.

offering some of the album's "most ravishing singing of all", Kiri Te Kanawa brought a golden tone to set long side the silver of Ruth Welting's Dew Fairy.

Greenfield shared Salter's and Steane's perception that John Pritchard's tempi were on the slow side, but felt that his "genial, ... winning" way with the score was a plus rather than a minus, even in the macabre thrills of the Witch's Ride.

[10] Engelbert Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel (1893), Märchenspiel in drei Bildern (Fairy play in three tableaux), with a libretto by Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, after Grimms' Fairy Tales In 1979, CBS Masterworks issued the album as a double LP (catalogue number 79321 in the UK, M2 35898 in the USA) and a double cassette (catalogue number 40-79127), both with notes, texts and translations.