This is Bernstein's third recording of songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn if you count his rather erratic live piano and voices account recorded in New York in 1968 (CBS—nla). In many ways, it is his best integrated, steadiest, and most mature reading, with tempos now noticeably reined back in ''Reveille'' and in ''Rhinlegendchen'', a song that Lucia Popp sings with idiomatic flair and less mannerism than Schwarzkopf for Szell on EMI. You may not think that sober-suited maturity is necessarily a virtue in these songs of young love and mortality but this is to reckon without the intricacy of the writing and the craftsmanship that has gone into the making of these songs. For the most part, they do need singing of the finest pedigree and performances of exceptional musical discipline.