Just as I’d begun to wonder if Ashkenazy has anything interesting to say about Mahler, this perfomance completely restored my confidence. It’s long been almost a truism to opine that no one will ever dislodge the Klemperer/Ludwig/Wunderlich recording, but this one yields to no one in its beauty and honesty.
Both soloists are excellent. Stuart Skelton negotiates the orchestral tuttis of the first song (The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow) like a true heldentenor, seething with bitterness and contempt while never being swamped by the huge climaxes nor resorting to bluster or rant.
In the second song, The Lonely One in Autumn, Lilli Paasikivi is perfect, conveying the sense of unhappy solitude while the orchestral accompaniment conveys a real autumnal chill. In Of Beauty her articulation and breath control during the manic so-called ‘horseback’ interlude are miraculous. In the wrong hands this passage can resemble Ethel Merman belting out Everything’s Coming up Roses, as one critic wittily observed. In Der Abschied, her repetitions of the word ewig “forever” make her voice sound like an extension of the orchestra.
The legendary producer Walter Legge, who supervised some of the Klemperer recording of this work, once said that in creating great recordings one began like a mogul emperor and finished like a jeweller: this is exactly what Ashkenazy has achieved. The scale and overall sweep are masterfully preserved but no detail goes unacknowledged. To name but one example – the exquisite woodwind filigree in the second movement.
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