No matter how many times one hears this piece, one can still marvel at the confidence and accomplishment of Mahler's first public outing. Wagner may cast his imposing shadow across the opening landscape (tremolando pedal-points, distant horns), but as soon as the woodwind voices begin to colour this strange idyll, we know whose hand is at work: could anyone else have written these particular oboe notes? How about the newness of the bass clarinet and bassoon writing, the tiny woodwind tattoos suggesting the proximity of the barracks' square? This 'child of sorrow' from Mahler's youth is filled with a quite astonishing sense of deja vu.
It has never sounded better than it does here—that I can say without hesitation. Decca engineering does it proud and so do Chailly's Dusseldorf choir—quite the best we've yet had on disc. As the gigantic ''Waldmarchen'' Lied slowly unfolds and the ominous choral refrains grow in foreboding and intensity, the strength and incisiveness and impeccable tuning of the choral singing become increasingly evident. The chorus's first full-blown tutti underlines the sighting of the fateful magic flower—red is the colour in every sense. It has been said that this lengthy first part of the score renders it top-heavy: Mahler may have thought so too, which is why he later omitted it from the revision. But there is too much that is treasurable here to contemplate discarding: the gorgeous second stanza, the forest murmurs so precisely imagined and scored, the rapture of the nightingale sequence (soprano and chorus); indeed, the distinctiveness (clumsy or not) of the vocal writing in general.
More importantly, we need ''Waldmarchen'' to set up the narrative drama of Parts 2 and 3. Chailly really shows his Mahlerian mettle here: with Brigitte Fassbaender's plangent tone menacing the proceedings, the colours darken and harp mingles with bass drum (and of course inky clarinet) to signal the Minstrel's strange music. It is here that Chailly does something quite extraordinary—though on what authorization, if any, I know not. He uses a boy alto (as opposed to the female alto—i.e. Fassbaender) to give voice from the grave to the wronged young brother. The effect of this suddenly alien sound is both chilling and moving—justification enough for me, although I would still be interested to know if there is any precedent or documentation for this practice. I somehow doubt it. No question, though, that a distinct change in colour is signalled for the boy's words and the naivete of Markus Baur's delivery could hardly be more disorientating. He returns to haunt us once more in the wake of the off-stage band summons (another chilling moment—premonitions of the Second Symphony): Chailly's engineers make that sound tinny and disembodied, as if from another realm—a hideous distortion of the medieval splendour so sumptuously realized in the opening bars of this final part.
I do have one major disappointment. After her marvellous showing in Chailly's Gurrelieder (3/91), Susan Dunn sounds curiously studied, even detached, in her big moments, not least that vaulting final solo—a wishful piece of vocal writing which simply has to stand the hair on end. For that alone you could always reconsider the Rattle version (EMI), though I personally think that Chailly's superior choir and sound beat it by a long chalk.'