Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 0

Sarah Connolly/Robert Dean Smith/RSO Berlin/Vladimir Jurowski
(Pentatone)
The conductor’s fine recording with the Berlin Radio Symphony has accuracy, perception and crystalline detail

Most of Vladimir Jurowski’s previous Mahler recordings have been made with the London Philharmonic, taken from their concerts together at the Royal Festival Hall in London and released on the orchestra’s own label. But this fine version of Das Lied von der Erde comes from a performance that he conducted in Berlin in October 2018, with his other orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony. The accompanying booklet includes an essay on the great song symphony by Jurowski himself, which is full of insights. The concluding Abschied, he writes, marks a return to “an individual identity by a ‘lyric’ artist who owes so much to the tradition of Schubert, a deliberate resignation from the ‘heroic’ path of Beethoven, in whose footsteps Mahler seemed to follow for such a long time”.

The Guardian 0

Beczała/Gerhaher/Huber
(Sony Classical)
Heard in a less usual male-voice pairing and with a piano reduction of the full orchestral score, there are more gains than losses to be found here