LISTEN: Das Lied von der Erde

Recently, a friend asked me for CD recommendations of the music of Gustav Mahler for the neophyte. It was quite a task and took a few days come to a very short list of two. I have to admit to being a Mahlerite and I suffer from Mahlaria, an currently undocumented condition which causes the sudden swelling up of tears and goosebumps at certain points in the music. Never fails, trust me.

I was six the first time I heard Mahler, a recording of the first symphony conducted by Bruno Walter. It wasn’t available in the U.S. and had been smuggled out of Europe. It’s hard to believe that, even at the end of the McCarthy Red Scare era, the music of Mahler would be considered un-American. (Then again.) The recording was making the rounds of the artier crowd in Detroit (there really was one), and it came to my house one evening. We all sat around staring at the phonograph player and were amazed by the amount of sound being produced. All those instruments, and that funny part with the funeral music and the klezmer band crossing paths. Mahler was having so much fun, and so were we.

But back to the recommendation. I decided to play the desert island game. If I had only one Mahler recording to take with me, what would it be? The first one is an old recording of the orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde, with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Eugen Jochum. The soloists are tenor Ernst Haeflieger and the greatly under-appreciated American mezzo Nan Merriman. The recording is no longer available on CD, but can be downloaded from iTunes. To sample it, the final part of the last song, “Abschied,” is below.

Of course, like potato chips, I couldn’t take just one. So, the other recording I recommended is of the Symphony No. 1, with Rafael Kubelik conducting the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. (There are over 130 recordings listed on MahlerRecords website, and that doesn’t include performances available for download only). This one includes a wonderful performance of the Songs of a Wayfarer with baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

I’m going off to my desert island now. Hankie in hand, waiting for the “ewig, ewig” of “Abschied.”