Mahler grows up fast in this volatile, tensile reading of his first 'child of sorrow'. Orchestrally, the teenage radical finds a sharp and uncompromising ear in Sinopoli. As familiar fingerprints proliferate through the first pages of the gigantic ''Waldmarchen'' Lied, Sinopoli nervily points up and intensifies the exciteable (and yes, even at this age, neurotic) stringendos, the sharp, unsettling dynamic contrasts. Note the sudden urgency of the brothers' search for the fateful red flower, anxious violin sforzandos streaking the staves; or the galloping horns (tremendous) which carry us with brutal abruptness to the murder. And in ''Der Spielmann'' and ''Hochzeitsstuck'', the terrible premonitions of the Second Symphony—the Dies irae more shocking for sounding so dry, almost matter of fact, the squally off-stage band with its tawdry clarinet. The fantastic is vividly projected here, the Philharmonia not shy or retiring in ensuring it is. The 'nature music' too is beautifully realized. Now there is one very good reason for not discarding the admittedly over-long ''Waldmarchen'' (another being the vital scene-setting and subsequent cross-referencing with ''Der Spielmann''): the forest murmurs of the second stanza are so precisely imagined and scored, and there is the innocent rapture of the Nightingale sequence, the Philharmonia violins really swooning into their own here.
So much for the good news. The drawback—and it is a major one—is Sinopoli's Japanese chorus: good for East/West cultural relations perhaps, but not so good for Mahler—particularly if one has heard what a really fine choir can do for this piece. I'm thinking now of the Dusseldorf choir on Chailly's Decca recording—keen, incisive, impeccably tuned, everything that the Shin-Yuh Kai Chorus is not. Admittedly DG don't do them any favours (or perhaps they do) with a somewhat backward balance: the lack of 'presence', the woolliness of words are real handicaps. I hear no real evidence to suggest that they know what they are singing about, no appreciable response to the colour, cast and drama of the text: bland is the word. They are at best enthusiastic.
The solo voices are good, and rather more than that in the case of Cheryl Studer. She is a considerable advance on Chailly's rather staid, disengaged Susan Dunn, and nowhere more so than in her vaulting final solo where Mahler seems momentarily to forget that it is a voice, not a violin he is writing for. Otherwise, I do miss Brigitte Fassbaender's plangent tones menacing the narrative of Part 2 (Waltraud Meier is far less distinctive) and, dare I say it, I am rather sold on Chailly's novel but in so far as I am aware unsolicited and undocumented use of a boy alto to give voice from the grave to the wronged young brother: a very unsettling, chilling, and ultimately moving effect. Chailly, then, holds most of the cards for a currently recommendable Klagende Lied. Decca engineering is his final ace.'