Mahler's Das klagende Lied
Mahler's first work - a stunning performance from MTT
The Gramophone Choice
Marina Shaguch sop Michelle DeYoung mez Thomas Moser ten Sergei Leiferkus bar San Francisco Symphony Chorus and Orchestra / Michael Tilson Thomas
SFS Media/Avie 821936 0017-2 (67’ · DDD/DSD · T/t). Recorded live 1996. Buy from Amazon
What a glorious prospect Mahler’s first major work opens up for us – and how beautifully it is realised here. The original three-part version of this ambitious folkloric cantata is like a musical manifesto of pretty well all Mahler to come. Horn-calls in the prelude to ‘Waldmärchen’ (‘Forest Tale’) awaken his unique nature-world; elfin woodwind fanfares intimate martial music as far as the Seventh and Eighth symphonies; the First Symphony (third movement) is germinating at the close of Part 1, the opening of the Second is already in place with the first bars of ‘Der Spielmann’ (‘The Wandering Musician’); and with ‘Hochzeitsstück’ (‘Wedding Feast’) Mahler seems to find himself in Act 2 of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung contemplating the opera he never wrote. But more startling than anything in Das klagende Lied is Mahler’s feeling for, and command of, the orchestra – and this from a composer who’d never heard a note of his own orchestration.
Recorded in 1996 (and originally released by RCA), the subtle detailing and nuancing of this performance indicates painstaking preparation but arrives in our living rooms sounding as if the ink is still wet on the page. Each repetition of that madrigal-like choral ritornello intensifies the lamentation of the title until release is found in the anguish of the wronged queen and soprano Marina Shaguch hurls out her leaping vocal line to bring down the walls of the castle. That’s Mahler’s innate theatricality for you. Quite a piece, and quite a performance.
