This immeasurable masterpiece has a disconcerting habit of resisting attempts to capture its haunting and evocative atmosphere on disc. There is no really bad recording, but only two or three to which I at any rate return again and again secure in the knowledge that I will be as moved as I often am in the concert-hall. I'm afraid this new recording can't be added to that select band. It is, I hasten to say, a very fine recording indeed, as most of this Frankfurt Mahler cycle have been. Balance is virtually ideal, there is no over-exposure of individual strands of texture or instrumentation, yet every detail is there. The orchestral playing is superb, although the oboist's tone is not the most pleasing I know, and Inbal clearly knows the score inside out. But in his anxiety not to over-sentimentalize music that can all too easily lend itself to indulgence, he has, it seems to me, missed some of the pathos and poignancy. It has more than Solti's Decca version, but—leaving aside the incomparable Walter/Ferrier/Patzak classic, also Decca—the conductor who obtained a performance that was both austere and emotionally devastating was Klemperer (EMI).
Peter Schreier gives what I think is the best recorded account of the tenor songs since Wunderlich (with Klemperer). He is no Heldentenor, but his voice easily rides the orchestra in the first movement—whether it would in the concert hall is another matter—and his diction and enunciation are superb. Strangely, it is in the fifth movement where his voice seems to be severely tested.
The Dutch mezzo-soprano Jard van Nes cannot yet be classed in this particular work with the greatest of her predecessors. Her German pronunciation is wayward, which detracts from the sound of the text (an intezral part of this work's power over a listener) and although she sings often quite beautifully, her performance comes over as an exercise in beautiful singing rather than as an interpretation of Mahler's innermost thought. A singer in Das Lied von der Erde who creates no frisson at ''Still ist mein Herz und harret seiner Stunde!'' is still a long way from penetrating to the core of its meaning. One day, I am confident, van Nes will achieve that understanding. At present she sings the notes. and very accurately.'