LEVINE CONDUCTS MAHLER: SYMPHO

Riccardo Chailly conducts the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, MDR Rundfunkchor, Chor der Oper Leipzig, GewandhausChor, Thomanerchor Leipzig, and GewandhausKinderchor with soloists Erika Sunnegardh, Ricarda Merbeth, Christiane Oelze, Lioba Braun.

Artfulness disguised as simplicity – achingly beautiful.

‘Flicka’, as she is known among friends, has garnered the opera houses and concert halls around the world for four decades and her agenda is still well-filled. As a recording artist she has been prolific and appeared in opera, art-song, sacred music, operetta, Broadway musical and cross-over albums – always with glorious results. The present disc, recorded in 1978 and reissued by Arkiv with the original cover picture and Lionel Salter’s liner notes, was one of the few records with her I never bought on LP – God knows why! Now that I finally have it in my collection I feel satisfied. Mahler songs and Frederica von Stade’s voice have always seemed the ideal combination.

Her clean, slim voice is especially well suited to Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. One of her specialities in opera was the trouser role: Cherubino and Octavian. The opening lines of Wenn mein Schatz are sung with innocent, boyish tone and in Ging heut’ Morgen she is wonderfully fresh and youthful, singing the final lines touchingly with ‘naked’ tone. She can also be strong and dramatic: Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer has all the necessary intensity with desperation almost visible. Then Die zwei blauen Augen is simplicity itself. I have heard few recordings of this cycle that sound so right – and this in spite of a woman singing what is, after all, a man’s words.

The two Wunderhorn songs are just as affecting. In Rheinlegendchen she adopts that boyish tone again and sings, so to speak, with wide open eyes – a spontaneous story-teller. Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?, famously recorded in the 1930s by Elisabeth Schumann, definitely has an open-air atmosphere. Schumann was a charmer, ‘Flicka’ with rounder tone is no less charming.

The five Rückert songs are, for me, indelibly connected with Janet Baker and her late 1960s recording with Barbirolli. Baker could, like no-one else, combine simplicity and deep emotions. But Frederica von Stade’s leaner voice is equally well suited to these songs. Her sophisticated artlessness – sounds like a contradiction but is exactly what I hear; artfulness disguised as simplicity – makes Liebst du um Schönheit so achingly beautiful. She applies the same light touch on Um Mitternacht, and this doesn’t exclude interpretative depth. She has the required power for the big emotional moments, most importantly the final pages of this great song.

The final song, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, has for forty years been one of the family’s great favourites – always in Janet Baker’s reading. Other recordings have popped up and we have admired them, listened closely and in the last analysis returned to Ms Baker. I still find it the deepest-probing but Frederica von Stade’s ethereal rendering of Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel (Rückert actually wrote Weltgewimmel) has also etched itself into my store of unforgettable musical moments. A wonderful end to a memorable recording.

The recording is first class and the LPO play like gods under Andrew Davis’s watchful direction. There are no song texts in the booklet, which is a pity, but they are easily available on the internet.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International [6/2011]

SYMPHONY 9 SACD

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor "Resurrection"

Humor, romance, drama, myths and fairytales: all this can be found in the poems of the collection 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'. Mahler was quite fond of these poems and used more than twenty of them in his compositions. The alternation between transcendent, sometimes religious songs, rough, poignant and jovial soldier songs, comic fables and folk tunes, all in an overarching and ever recognizable Mahlerian idiom, makes these songs so appealing to perform and to listen to. Though very famous in their orchestral versions, Mahler composed most of them originally for piano and voice. These primary versions don't get performed as often as the orchestral ones do, but here they are performed beautifully by Esther Kuiper, Sven Weyens, and Maurice Lammerts van Bueren.

SYMPHONY 7 SACD

"Walter's glowingly radiant reading...orchestral textures are clear and yet warm. Desi Halban's contribution is refreshingly individual, dramatic as well as touching, and she is comparably impressive in the songs."

-- Penguin Guide [2003/4] Review of Sony 64450

MAHLER: SYMPHONIES NO 6 & 7 M

Heavy and deliberate as Maazel’s idiosyncratic point of view undoubtedly is, you can’t fault the execution, very much on the side of Mahler the modernist. Jagged textures stand revealed throughout, offset by richly resonant sound and characteristically warm VPO strings worked to the bone in an attempt to realise as many of the detailed dynamics as possible. I confess a personal nostalgia for the very Viennese waltzes and ländlers of this scherzo, fondly remembered from youthful impressions of the same work, players and conductor on a first-time visit to Vienna.

-- David Nice, BBC Music Magazine

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 1 MAAZEL,

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 1, ETC ME

MAHLER: SYMPHONIES NO 9 & 10 (

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 8 SWEET,

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 3, KINDERT