Pentatone already has an excellent recording of “Das Lied von der Erde” in its catalog, featuring the Netherlands Philharmonic led by Marc Albrecht, in which Alice Coote’s perceptive singing joins the exalted company of Ferrier, Baker (Kubelík or Haitink) and Ludwig (Klemperer). I came to this new CD with some trepidation, having found Jurowski’s performances of Mahler’s first two Symphonies uneven, while Tal Agam gave high praise to the conductor’s performance of Symphony No. 4 (read here). I would now assert this Jurowski and his forces have given us one of the finest ever recordings of this magnificent work.
Orchestral execution throughout is superb and any concerns about Jurowski’s tempos were completely unfounded. He sets ideal tempos, allowing himself generous amounts of rubato, thus enabling his singers to articulate text with complete clarity. Moreover, Jurowski unearths the essential mood and character of each movement, ensuring the emotional import of the words is heightened by the orchestral accompaniment. This, in turn, draws out readings of stirring poignancy from Smith and Connolly.
Jurowski’s ear for inner detail and textural clarity rivals the late Pierre Boulez, though he inspires playing of ardent potency, a quality often lacking in Boulez’s Mahler. (Sample the intensity brought to the first movement’s climax (6’32”-7’14”). This attention to details sounds entirely natural, never mannered, as it sometimes does in Rattle’s recent account with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BR Klassik). Jurowski and his Berliners uncover new colors, the aural equivalent of seeing a Renaissance painting freshly restored. Both performance and recording allow us to hear everything in this multifaceted music.
Related Classical Music Reviews
- Review: Mahler – Symphony No. 4 – LPO, Jurowski
- Review: Mahler – Symphony No. 7 – Minnesota Orchestra, Vänskä
- Review: “Clytemnestra” – Ruby Hughes, Soprano
Mahler’s use of a large orchestra was, to a large extent, a means of having a more varied color palette, and the Berlin RSO revels in those timbral possibilities. Much of this music features the orchestra’s principals, whose playing throughout is consistently beguiling. Sample the gossamer beauty of the second movement’s opening measures, violins barely audible as they attend to the forlorn musings of the oboe. The orchestra has already set a mood of gentle resignation, which is then only heightened by Connolly’s first entrance. Or listen to how the players create a bewitching playfulness that wholly captures the naïveté of youth. Wonderful too is the improvisatory freedom heard in the exchanges between the winds and Connolly during the opening minutes of the last movement. Time and again, Jurowski and his players find a poignant delicacy in the music that is deeply affecting.
Smith’s performance of the notoriously taxing tenor part is very fine. This is his second recording of the work to come out in a short period of time (a studio recording made in March 2017 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer is also released on Channel Classics these days). In this live performance, recorded at the Berlin Philharmonie on 14 October 2018, Smith is emotionally involving, the fury of “Das Trinklied” powerfully conveyed, the macabre humor of “Der Trunkene” heartbreaking.
Dame Sarah Connolly’s interpretation, her second on record, is deeply touching, especially so in the final movement, “Der Abschied.” Connolly is not “heat-on-sleeve” emotional (in this Ferrier remains supreme), but, supported by an orchestra alive to every nuance and shift of mood, her understated approach still honestly conveys Mahler’s farewell. During the movement’s 28-minute span there are a few occasions in which Connolly’s vibrato threatens to become a distraction, but her subtle variety of colors and pointed textual inflections, especially in softer dynamics, keep one absorbed. One never doubts that she truly feels what she is singing, and her closing “Ewigs” (Farewell), delicately attended by the orchestra, leaves one emotionally spent.
Pentatone’s engineers have fully mastered the difficult Berlin Philharmonie acoustic, producing a wide-ranging recording of immediacy and warmth. Excellent liner notes, including a thoughtful essay by the conductor, round out a valuable addition to the Mahler discography. Pentatone now has two of the best recordings of this work – we can only be thankful for such riches.
Mahler – Das Lied von der Erde
Dame Sarah Connolly – Mezzo-Soprano
Robert Dean Smith – Tenor
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski – Conductor
Pentatone, Hybrid SACD PTC5186760
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