Ivan Fischer’s Das Lied von der Erde is among the finest I’ve heard. Nothing will ever supplant the Klemperer/Ludwig/Wunderlich – a reading for the ages if ever there were one – but this one, with mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romsberger and tenor Robert Dean Smith, runs it close. The Budapest Festival Orchestra also covers itself in glory: just listen to the plangent oboe in the second song “The lonely one in autumn,” depicting the lengthening shadows.

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Mahler’s sublime rumination on life, death, joy, suffering, eternity, transience and everything else human existence can offer, embraces his dictum that a symphony must embrace all creation. The more introspective songs have the nuanced texture of shot silk, the more robust passages a riotous kaleidoscopic exuberance.

Dean Smith immediately establishes his heldentenor credentials with his defiant...