This recorded performance of Mahler’s masterpiece has
a curious provenance. The three tenor songs were recorded in
1992, but the mezzo songs were only recorded ten years later,
and in a different location. I can find no indication that the
performance has been previously available, so one can only wonder
why getting on for nine years had to pass before it was released.
The hybrid nature of the performance leaves one feeling uncomfortable,
and so it should. But I only looked at the recording dates after
listening to the disc for the first time, and can affirm that
nothing in the performance or the sound alerted me to anything
untoward. All the same, it shouldn’t work. That it does
work, and triumphantly, gives pause for thought.
The performance opens just as it should, the short introduction
a near-perfect blend of impetuosity and breadth. Throughout
this movement, and throughout the work, Michael Gielen demonstrates
a natural feel for the ebb and flow of the Mahlerian pulse.
His instinct for pressing on or holding back seems unerring,
especially since he invariably does so on those occasions that
the score specifically demands it. Jerusalem is magnificent.
The role requires a full heldentenor voice, but also, and crucially,
the more intimate and delicate qualities of a Lieder singer.
Jerusalem has both, and his performance of these songs is one
of the very finest I have heard. Listen how much he makes of
the words in the phrase beginning “Ein voller Becher Weins”
at 3:07 in this first song, and how much more meaning he extracts
from the words and the music than even the finest of his rivals
in the quieter passages of the fifth. If he shouts a little
at the end of this song, and if he leaves the climactic word
“Lebens” in the first song a bar too soon (7:12),
his inspired and inspiring singing of the rest will persuade
us happily to forgive him.
On her own terms, Cornelia Kallisch is very fine. She manages
the key moments particularly well. In the second song, for example,
at the words “Mein Herz ist müde” (4:57) she
makes us share the weariness of her heart, and her sudden pianissimo
for the following phrase is very affecting indeed. Her duet
with the first oboe a page or so later, stark and bleak, is
another high point. Of course the mezzo’s big challenge
is the long, final movement, “Der Abschied”, and
Kallisch acquits herself very well here. The long final chapter,
beginning at the words “Er stieg vom Pferd” (20:48),
produces some inspired singing, and the closing pages are suitably
inward and lonely, her final, murmured “Ewig” seemingly
emerging from silence. There is some vocal strain from time
to time in the upper register, and the voice has a tendency
to spread under pressure. This is a pity, as vocal purity is
everything in these songs.
The orchestral playing from the South-West German Radio Orchestra
is superb. Honourable mentions go to the first flute and the
first clarinet for some particularly eloquent playing, especially
when accompanying the mezzo. The orchestral sound is both rich
and analytical, this the result of Mahler’s writing, but
also an indication of the conductor’s skill. Gielen’s
pacing of the work is masterly, making the most, for example,
of the banal central section of the fourth song. He understands
and supports his singers, and only in the third song do I find
his reading rather too fast and hectic, rushing Jerusalem, and
the whole somewhat lacking in porcelain delicacy.
The tenor songs, the orchestral playing and the conducting make
this a very desirable disc indeed. That judgement could almost
stand as it is, but the mezzo is the crux of the matter. Cornelia
Kallisch, unfortunately for her, has some formidable rivals
in this work, and her singing is marginally less involving than
the finest of these. I wouldn’t want to upset Kathleen
Ferrier’s many admirers, but hers in not my favourite
assumption of the mezzo role. Janet Baker, on the other hand,
with Haitink or, especially, with Kubelik on Audite, is another
matter. Brigitte Fassbaender is also very fine, with Giulini
on DG, a reading that finds quite different things to say about
Das Lied that do many other performances, and one that
should be in every collection. There are some mavericks in there
too, notably Horenstein’s marvellous performance on BBC
Legends, with what was then called the BBC Northern Symphony
Orchestra. Mahler sanctioned a baritone in place of the mezzo,
and Bernstein’s Viennese performance on Decca, with Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau is another that any serious Mahler collector
should have. Released a month or so earlier than that version,
nearly forty-five years ago - good grief! - is the one that,
in my view, comes nearest to perfection, with Fritz Wunderlich
as fine as Jerusalem, Christa Ludwig a wonderful, heart-felt
mezzo, and authoritative conducting, albeit conducting that
might not suit everybody, from Klemperer. This reading from
Gielen, in spite of its curious and frankly counterfeit timescale,
now takes its place amongst my favourite readings of this eternally
satisfying work.
William Hedley
Cornelia Kallisch (mezzo); Siegfried Jerusalem (tenor) 
