These are wonderfully cleansing interpretations. Hans Rosbaud, a figure revered among budding conductors in the 1950s, not least Boulez, was, I suspect, at heart something of an anti-romantic. He conducts both pieces with a refreshing lack of baggage – the music presented as itself, no more, no less – making them a natural progression from Brahms and further back, classical as much as romantic.
Had I listened to Rosbaud’s Das Lied before I wrote my “Collection” article on the work in the August issue, I would have accorded his reading a high place in the pantheon of recorded performances. It has a tough lucidity, a total command of structure yet also an authentic sense of the impermanence of all things on this earth predicated by Mahler. As much as any interpreter, he balances all the instrumental elements with the care for line and texture for which he was renowned, the wind section of his regular orchestra deserving special praise, particularly the oboist who plays the opening of the second movement with just the right elegiac feeling.
Melchert is not, vocally speaking, among the most accommodating of tenor soloists, but his hefty voice carries magnificently over the orchestra in the first song, and in “Der Trunkene im Fruhling”, he has the vocal range to differentiate between assertive power and extreme delicacy. Above all, as a Herod and Oedipus in the theatre, he knows how to sing with meaning, off the words. Hoffmann boasts one of the most beautiful mezzos ever to have recorded this work, and she uses it to telling effect, with long lines floated on warm tone. She is at her most convincing in the sadness of the autumn traveller of the second song. In the finale, both she and Rosbaud are happier in the earlier sections than in the flood of emotion called for at the end.
Bruckner’s Seventh is again a model where controlling structure is concerned. William Mann rightly declared the reading “confident, affirmative” in his original review (5/59), although he felt the performance wanting in “grandeur and poetry”. I find plenty of the former, less of the latter. This isn’t an opulent or especially sonorous reading, but it has a granite strength and honesty of purpose that is utterly convincing. Try the opening movement’s huge climax beginning at 13'15'' on track 1 and you’ll perhaps appreciate the rugged determination of this splendid performance, while on this occasion the Adagio (no cymbal) sounds like the true successor to Beethoven’s slow movements it should be.
Both works enjoy recordings that precisely reflect the style of the interpretation: clean, clear, blessedly free from any added reverberation, and catching the lithe playing of the orchestra. One can hardly believe that the disc is 40 years old. If you happen to want both these works on a single, budget-price set, this would be a most rewarding purchase.'