Conductor Adam Fischer and the Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra perform the beautiful “Das Lied von der Erde” by Gustav Mahler on this new recording. Mezzo soprano Anna Larsson and tenor Stuart Skelton execute these extremely demanding songs.
”Das Lied von der Erde” is filled with a special atmosphere: a mood of farewell – mostly, of course, in the last movement, ‘Der Abschied’. When attempting to construct that last movement, every conductor and every orchestra are faced with a challenge that is as complicated as it is thrilling. In my view, the last movement of Das Lied von der Erde is the most difficult one to conduct in the entire repertoire. Mahler even abandoned the sensation of regular tempo. He had stated elsewhere that one should not conduct the metre but the rhythm, but here things are different.
I cannot disassociate this farewell from the last movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Although the slow dissolving of life is even more apparent there, the tendency is already clear in Das Lied von der Erde – a continuous line can be drawn from here to the last page of the Ninth.
From the onset, the music in Das Lied von der Erde is permeated by a special mood. Even the texts, based on Far Eastern poetry, are more mood than content. Mahler repeatedly abandons the meaning of the words, but the mood remains. The music implies so much more than the words! For instance, the third poem evokes the reflection of a mirror image in water, but I don’t see those images anywhere in the music.” – Adam Fischer
Here is an extract of this work, as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic:
