Lied

A host of accomplished conductors including Daniel Harding, Daniele Gatti, Bernard Haitink and Eliahu Inbal lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in these performances of Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 1-10. Recorded in Amsterdam over two seasons in 2010/11, the collection also includes 'Das Lied von der Erde'.

After her 2009 covers album Schallplatte-Nied Opleggt, German singer Ina Müller's 2011 record, Das Wär Dein Lied Gewesen, is more of a proper follow-up to her 2008 hit album Liebe Macht Taub. Müller offers several new humorous stories on relationships ("Fremdgehen"), tabloids ("Paparazzia"), the Internet ("Podkarsten"), and disappointing men (the title track), presented with a guitar- and piano-based pop sound which incorporates some elements of rock and country. The album reached number two on the German charts.

"Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own" (Gramophone). Filmed on tour at Berlin's Philharmonie, this account of the valedictory Ninth Symphony is an intense interpretation, expressing Bernstein's conviction that modern man had at last caught up with the message encoded in Mahler's last completed work. Having made his famous 1966 studio recording of "Das Lied vin der Erde" in Vienna, Bernstein re-recorded this in Israel with the same searing subjectivity. René Kollo draws on the voice of a great Wagner tenor, while Christa Ludwig, the greatest exponent of the contralto songs at the time, is unbearably poignant in the final movement's fusion of elation and sadness.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the release of Kathleen Ferrier in New York, historic performances of Mahler and Bach by the much-loved contralto during her triumphant visits to the United States in 1948 and 1950. Recorded live on Ferriers only appearances in Carnegie Hall in January 1948, four months after her acclaimed performance at the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival, Mahlers Das Lied von der Erde reunited her with the conductor Bruno Walter and saw her making first appearances with tenor Set Svanholm and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Re-mastered by Norman White and Adrian Tuddenham, this remarkable account pre-dates Ferriers often-reissued 1952 recording by four years and finds her in exhilarating fresh voice a vivid, vital display of a great artist at her peak.

This recording was made under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw in December 2019, two months before his death. A few weeks before that, he had called Thomas Dieltjens, artistic director of Het Collectief, to tell him: ‘Since our concert in mid-July 2019 at the Saintes Festival, I’ve been haunted by Das Lied von der Erde". I’m totally under its spell, and every day I discover new things in this masterpiece by Mahler. Wouldn’t it be a dream if we could record this music with the outstanding group of instrumentalists and soloists we had in Saintes? And preferably as soon as possible?’ Reinbert himself made the arrangement for fifteen instrumentalists and two soloists and invested all his remaining strength in the recording of this music, which encompasses the whole of life, from the freshness of birth to the moment of farewell… A testamentary album, with the moving mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot, which gives us an opportunity to pay tribute to one of the key ambassadors of twentieth-century music.

Due to its disastrous Viennese premiere in 1954, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Symphony in F sharp was quickly dropped from the repertoire. Yet this late masterpiece, along with Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt, found receptive audiences in the 1970s and has become one of his best-known works. The old criticisms against Korngold's traditional tonality, his conservative formal bent, and his professional Hollywood polish no longer matter; nor should his occasionally spicy dissonances, angular melodies, and ambitious orchestration prove an obstacle to appreciation. Korngold's dense and dramatic symphony may be regarded either as a late development of Mahlerian post-Romanticism or as an offshoot of tonal Modernism, as practiced by Shostakovich and Prokofiev.