RECORD REVIEWS

Why award Recording of the Month to a project whose vocal soloists, though thoroughly committed, are in some respects less than ideal?

- By Jason Victor Serinus

Because the orchestra and conducting in this Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), one of the greatest works of music in the late German romantic idiom, shed such light on Mahler's achievement as to make the recording either a first choice or an essential supplement to the other great recordings of his career-defining creation.

Mahler, who did not live to witness Bruno Walter conduct the premiere of this massive vocal symphony, composed Das Lied von der Erde in 1908 and 1909, a period when his life was in turmoil. His young daughter, Maria, had died unexpectedly, and Alma, his progressively estranged wife, blamed Maria's death on the composition of Mahler's song cycle, Kindertotenlieder, which reflects his obsession with the death of children. Add Mahler's diagnosis of heart disease and resignation as head of the Vienna Opera, and one might expect him to have composed a relentlessly tragic work. While those works would come—Symphony No.9 and the incomplete Symphony No.10—Das Lied von der Erde is much more than a statement of life's pain.