Comparing the first few vocal phrases in these two performances, I began to suspect that, for once, Fischer-Dieskau would not have things all his own way. He sounds edgy and effortful: Ivan Kusnjer is smoother, with a distinctive, youthful timbre inspiring confidence in his ability to ride the orchestral tumults that Zemlinsky unleashes in the Symphony's baritone movements, and which link the music as closely with Waldemar's tirades in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder as with anything in Mahler.
By the end of the first movement it is evident that, after all, there will be no contest. Kusnjer can only manage an awkwardly unsteady high F sharp, and has not been obliged to retake phrases in which his German diction is flawed. Fischer-Dieskau has settled down, and by the time we reach the marvellous final movement his performance equals anything he might have achieved in earlier years. At the words ''Steh still'' Kusnjer is prosaic, like a well-meaning schoolmaster calling a class to order. Fischer-Dieskau is a magician, his eloquence hypnotic: and when he gives way to the orchestra for the Symphony's great peroration, Maazel and the BPO sustain the mood of painful renunciation to powerfully moving effect.
Karan Armstrong has stronger vocal character than Ivan Kusnjer, and hers is a well-varied performance. But she miscalculates the style of the difficult fourth movement: it is too slow, too operatic. Julia Varady is less mannered and more flexible, while having sufficient power in reserve when this is called for, notably in the sixth song.
The new Supraphon has the advantage of the refined, alert playing of the Czech Philharmonic, although Bohumil Gregor's rather deliberate tempos reflect the generally studied nature of this performance; and the recording, with its tendency to isolate the baritone from the orchestra, is also less natural in quality than that of Deutsche Grammophon.'