This is among the most compelling performances of this oft-recorded work that I have heard on disc or in the concert-hall: it may become one of the CDs of the year, or of any year. That makes it all the more incomprehensible that it has languished unissued for some nine years in EMI's vaults, apparently because Tennstedt would not approve its release. If he was dissatisfied with the superlative playing and often inspired singing here, he must have been imagining some ideal rendering in heaven.
The contribution of the LPO is, in every respect assured, sensitive and life-enhancing. Inspired by Tennstedt's instinctive feeling for both the structure and texture of the work, they play with alternating intensity and delicacy throughout. Take the passage in the first song (track 1, approx 4'56'') before ''Das Firmament blaut ewig'' and you'll hear the rich eloquence of the string playing, the acuity of the wind the incisiveness of the brass, all caught to perfection in the excellent recording. The tempo is slower than on any other version, but Tennstedt is quite able to sustain the song at his chosen pace, indeed it gives it an added weight and significance. Otherwise his speeds tend to the orthodox.
In the fourth song, conductor and players catch perfectly the swaying, caressing music of the beautiful girls and their tresses (track 4, 1'40''), then the tumult at the appearance of the lads, here matching Walter's accentuation of this music (Decca). The third and fifth songs are done with an exhilarating lift making the sombre, eternal thoughts of the finale that much more of a contrast. Here, predictably, Tennstedt is in his element drawing all the longing and Schmerz from the miraculous music, the strings especially warm and expansive at the key phrase ''Ich sehne mich o Freund'' and much later at ''Alluberall und ewig'', while the orchestral interlude shows Tennstedt at his most imaginative in encompassing the essence of Mahler's world expressed herein.
Tennstedt is blessed with one of the best tenor soloists on disc. Konig has the heroic tone and steadiness so many others lack. He isn't as poetic and imaginative as the irreplaceable Patzak (Decca), or as youthfully exuberent as Wunderlich (Klemperer/EMI) or as fluent as Jerusalem (Barenboim/Erato), but he sings with refreshing ease and an innate feeling for the text, especially in the fifth song where he and Tennstedt, precisely catch the hectic mood of the drunkard's fatalism. Baltsa doesn't have the language so idiomatically on her tongue, but in the early 1980s she could sing with a grave beauty and restrained vibrancy that is its own justification, and her weighting of tone and notes in the final song is finely wrought more withdrawn and contained than the more open-hearted Ludwig for Klemperer and Bernstein (CBS, indifferently recorded), more pleasing in tone quality than Meier (Barenboim)—try ''O sieh! wie eine Silberbarke schwebt'' to hear how unobtrusively right is Baltsa's phrasing. Others may still prefer, as I might I another mood, the particular responses to words shown by Ludwig by Ferrier (Walter) and by Fassbaender (Giulini/DG).
Nothing will ever quite replace the peculiarly taut and authoritative accents of the Walter disc though this one comes close to the same degree of tension and dedication. All others must now give way to this reading, even Klemperer's. Making my comparisons anew, I found him frankly leaden in ''Von der Jugend'' and relatively impassive in the following song, though much else remains strong and purposeful. Good as his 1966–7 recording may be, the new one is markedly superior, and even better than that of the Barenboim, himself—set beside Tennstedt—a shade lacklustre as regards both performance (the LPO trumps every card of the Chicago SO) and recording (more detail present here). John Willan was the producer. A pity he changed trades: orchestral managers are easier to come by than record producers able to achieve such a carefully crafted disc: well-balanced, spacious and immediate. I found it one of those issues that makes reviewing worth all the time involved, one that deserved and received an immediate replay.'