This is a budget (re)release in Erato’s Maestro series.
If it has been picked based on the merits of conductor Daniel
Barenboim, then it is a poor choice indeed as he creates the
biggest problems in a broadly unsatisfying account of this great
work. The main issue is that Barenboim is in too much of a hurry.
The opening movement careers off, leaving Siegfried Jerusalem
struggling to keep up almost from the off. Barenboim’s
aggressive attack could be defended in this movement, but it
becomes a serious flaw in the gentler alto songs. The second
movement lacks the wistful listlessness that the poem evokes,
and the great finale lacks the room to expand and bloom until
the very closing pages when the broadening out comes almost too
late. These wayward tempi have an unavoidable impact on the soloists.
Siegfried Jerusalem, normally so dependable, seem to feel ill
at ease in his first two songs, sounding strained and uncomfortable
in the opening movement, something exacerbated by the tearaway
pace.
The playfulness of
Von der Jugend is lost too, though
he appears more comfortable by the time he gets to the frolics
of the
Drunkard in Spring. Equally, Waltraud Meier, one
of the most communicative of singers on the operatic stage, is
detached and steely here at precisely the moments where most
emotional involvement is required. In
Der Einsame in Herbst,
for example, she sings as though she were watching the lonely
man rather than inhabiting him and that layer of distance becomes
a serious distraction in the great finale. This
Farewell ticks
all the right boxes and plays all the right notes, but it is
like looking at a museum object through a glass case when Mahler
demands that we tear open our hearts and share his vision of
the ever-blue eternity. All is not entirely lost: Barenboim does
manage the stiller central section of the first movement well,
and the closing pages with the many
ewigs fading into
the distance are very moving. These moments on their own just
won’t do, however. Fundamentally this interpretation doesn’t
get to the heart of what Mahler wants: instead we end up seeing
it only from a safe distance, something that would have appalled
this most emotional of composers.
Simon Thompson
Waltraud Meier (mezzo);
Siegfried Jerusalem (tenor) 
