When Alan Blyth surveyed the extant recordings of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in these pages a couple of decades ago (8/97), he gave Georg Solti’s 1972 Chicago account with Yvonne Minton and René Kollo short shrift: ‘unsympathetic and earthbound’, he wrote; Kollo he described as ‘tight-toned’, the Australian mezzo as ‘appealing in tone but impersonal in her utterance’.

The recording was long out of the catalogue; though recently reissued in Decca’s big CSO / Solti box (3/18), it is now also made available in slightly more pocket-friendly form by Eloquence to celebrate Minton’s 80th birthday, alongside the song recordings originally issued as couplings for Solti’s symphony recordings. Listening to Das Lied, one can understand Blyth’s point, and Kollo’s tenor certainly sounds uncomfortable as he struggles against some characteristically full-throttle accompaniment from Solti.

But when it comes to Minton, Solti’s go to mezzo for Mahler, one listener’s ‘impersonal’ is another’s ‘restrained and touching’. This is classy, subtle and undemonstrative singing, but no worse for that, and if Solti can seem impatient in some of the other songs – Minton has to hang on tight as he gallops through the central section of ‘Von der Schönheit’ – he takes his time in a moving, patiently built-up account of ‘Der Abschied’.

Minton is similarly effective in the Wunderhorn and Fahrenden Gesellen songs, where Solti’s attention to detail comes across in every bar of the Chicagoans’ accompaniment. The sound is detailed and alive, if a little raw-edged. A fine sample of an outstanding and often underrated singer.