Gustav
MAHLER
Das Lied Von Der
Erde
Waltraud Meier
(Mezzo-soprano), Ben Heppner (Tenor)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Lorin
Maazel
RCA Red Seal
74321 67957 2 [62.30]
Crotchet
Some reviews are easier to write than others. When a recording inspires and
impresses, maybe says something new, perhaps has other qualities so outstanding
you need to tell the world every collection would be the poorer without it,
it's hard to know when to stop giving out bouquets. Likewise when a recording
annoys and irritates, maybe is lacklustre, contains poor playing or singing,
perhaps shows evidence of a performer's lack of care or understanding, you
want to go on heaping the brickbats and warn fellow collectors off. But the
hardest reviews to write are those where the performance falls in the middle
of those extremes. When you are faced with something that, no matter how
many times you listen to it, you can find nothing special in it to praise
and nothing particular in it to denigrate. This Munich recording of Das Lied
Von Der Erde conducted by Lorin Maazel is a good example of the latter case.
I can find some praise for the tenor Ben Heppner. He's a thoughtful and
interesting artist with a flexible voice and keen sense of words. In "Das
Trinklied", for example, his delivery of the central "Das Firmament blaut
ewig" is filled with wonder and expectation. Then, in the extraordinary passage
where the narrator sees an ape dancing on graves in the moonlight, he brings
to this expressionistic passage all the power and abandonment it needs, pushing
himself to the extreme. Then later in the fifth song, "Der Trunkene im Fruhling",
a more measured tempo than usual from Maazel allows Heppner to treat this
as a song on equal terms with the first whose counterpart it is. However,
Heppner's contribution alone will not promote this recording above many others
since Waltraud Meier, though a fine artist too, here seems somewhat semi-detached
from the words, especially where warmth of expression is needed. The second
song, for example, is an elusive creature only the very best interpreters
(Baker, Ludwig, Ferrier, Hodgson and Fischer-Dieskau) penetrate to the core.
Meier skates over the surface of this delicate mixture of loneliness and
regret to its ultimate detriment when compared with greater accounts. The
same is true of her delivery of the great last movement, "Der Abscheid".
This passes us by without really involving us, even though every note is
in place in a balanced sound picture containing some fine playing by a great
orchestra. They would have sounded even better if the chamber-like qualities
of this unique work had been allowed to come through a little more by the
engineers.
Lorin Maazel made a complete Mahler cycle in the 1980s with the Vienna
Philharmonic. For me many of those recordings suffered from a degree of
self-consciousness that was, in the end, self-defeating. Here in the one
work he didn't record at that time he seems to have played safe. His contribution
therefore makes sure the orchestra plays beautifully and that the soloists
are well supported, but that's about all. A glance at the recording dates
on the booklet tells us the work was taped in two two-day sessions nine months
apart. In other words the soloists were never in the studio at the same time
and their respective songs recorded nine months apart. This happens quite
often with recordings of this work but I think is a mistake since the orchestra
and conductor must surely find it hard to "think through" their performance
of a work in which the engagement of the listener on a very intimate level
is crucial. I do, of course, know the great Otto Klemperer recording on EMI
was made in an even more fragmentary fashion but maybe that is the exception
that proves the rule. The recording by Jascha Horenstein, for example, was
a complete performance taped in the studio for broadcast without stopping
and the dividends are obvious from the start. And is there a greater account
of this work on the market than Horenstein's?
Maazel's is a well recorded, played and sung account of Mahler's late masterpiece
and you can certainly do worse. But you can also do a whole lot better and
at a lower price. This CD sells at full price but at medium price you can
get what are, for me, three of the greatest accounts of the work ever set
down: Jascha Horenstein on BBC Legends, Kurt Sanderling on Berlin Classics,
Otto Klemperer on EMI "Great Recordings of the Century". It is to those versions
I advise you to go, along with Raymond Leppard's on BBC Classics where Janet
Baker gives the finest account of the contralto songs of them all.
Reviewer
Tony Duggan
Performance:
Recording:
