MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT
Sound Samples & Downloads

Gustav MAHLER (1860-1911)
Das Lied von der Erde (1909) [63:31]
Cornelia Kallisch (mezzo); Siegfried Jerusalem (tenor)
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg/Michael Gielen
rec. November 1992, Hans Rosbaud Studio, Baden-Baden and November 2002, Konzerthaus, Freiburg
German text and English translation provided
HÄNSSLER CLASSICS CD 93.269 [63:31]

Experience Classicsonline


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 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.