BaL 20.04.24 - Mahler: Kindertotenlieder

[LHC]

Like many others I've got Janet Baker with Barbirolli, Hermann Prey with Haitink and Christa Ludwig with Karajan. I've also got Gerhaher with Nagano, Marjana Lipovsek with Abbado (accompanying his recording of Nono's Il canto sospeso) and Michelle DeYoung with Tilson Thomas.

[richardfinegold]

I suppose it depends a bit on whether you like the 6th Sym that comes before it on the twofer. Er, what did you mean by 'imprinted'?

Imprinting is when a given performance or a recording of a work simply sounds so right that any other , a priori, sounds wrong. And yes, I really like the M6 that accompanied it

[Roger Webb]

Thanks for that, one's never to old to learn something new! Mahler 6 was discussed at length a while back - Pulcinella chided me for a lengthy to-and-fro on the order of the middle movements, without opening up the discussion again, are you, like me, a scherzo second person?

[Wolfram]

JB/JB is splendid in more or less every way but that damn glockenspiel! Every note is wrong I think? It’s as though they’re reading the part in bass clef. Shocking that no one picked that up.

It’s just too prominent. On Chailly’s recording the glockenspiel is a ghostly presence in the background, chiming like a clock in the night in a downstairs room: very effective and disconcerting.

[Wolfram]

JB/JB is splendid in more or less every way but that damn glockenspiel! Every note is wrong I think? It’s as though they’re reading the part in bass clef. Shocking that no one picked that up.

I think the player on that recording must have just come from playing one of the anvils in the Rhinegold.

[Pulcinella]

Bumping in anticipation of tomorrow's episode of BaL.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thanks for that, one's never to old to learn something new! Mahler 6 was discussed at length a while back - Pulcinella chided me for a lengthy to-and-fro on the order of the middle movements, without opening up the discussion again, are you, like me, a scherzo second person?

Probably “chided” because across at least two other threads there must be well in excess of 100 posts on this. The subject has been pretty much exhausted. Whereas other works by Mahler barely get a mention.

[Pulcinella]

Probably “chided” because across at least two other threads there must be well in excess of 100 posts on this. The subject has been pretty much exhausted. Whereas other works by Mahler barely get a mention.

I hope I didn't really chide Roger: rather, that I gently pointed out the previous ad nauseam discussions you refer to.
(I know Roger well enough to say that he wouldn't really have been offended! Or if he was I could have mollified him with a pint in the pub!)

[Barbirollians]

I wonder if I'm the only person who avoids listening to this work, even when it turns up in box sets I've bought for other reasons. The only one I do hear occasionally is the Ferrier/Walter Columbia version, maybe the first recording of the work, and I suspect the only studio recording of the Vienna Philharmonic outside Vienna (Kingsway Hall 4 October 1949).

Since becoming a parent I don’t listen to it . I do recall Ferrier/Walter being outstanding but it’s not music I want to listen to any more.

[Wolfram]

Since becoming a parent I don’t listen to it . I do recall Ferrier/Walter being outstanding but it’s not music I want to listen to any more.

I also avoid listening to these songs, and I’m a big Mahler fan. As a prelude to this BaL I’ve listened to the fourteen recordings I own of this work - that’s a lot of recordings for something I never listen to these days. For what it’s worth the ones I enjoyed(?) the most were Ferrier/Water, Baker/either Barbirolli or Bernstein and Gerhaher/Negano. There’s a very interesting note by Schwanenwilms in the booklet accompanying her recording, which uses the piano accompaniment, where she relates each of the songs to the five stages of grief. I don’t much care for her performance though.

[smittims]

Interesting comments there, thanks. I have wondered why the deaths of children get so much emphasis in19th-century literature. I wonder if it was a subconcious frustration at the still-high infant and child mortality rate despite the vast technological advances of the age. Medicine took a while to catch up.

[edashtav]

Marjana Lipovsek with Claudio Abbado and the BPO was the winner selected by Ian Burnside. Their interpretation of the fifth and final song is astonishingly good and 'sealed the deal' for me.
Another fine BaL with Iain Burnside being inclusive in the main with the exception of Bernstein's excesses, a judgement which I endorse.

[visualnickmos]

I listened to the BAL, however, it's not a work that I ever listen to! For the reasons that I find it somewhat a difficut subject to gain any 'enjoyment' from; rather reminds me of Victorian 'post mortem' portraits. That's not to say I cannot appreciate the performances. I suppose if one was to listen from a purely musical standpoint, ie ignoring the words and the subject as much as possible(!) it may be more emotionally bearable.
NB. I couldn't bear Ferrier. Her voice simply grates on me. Maazel and Abbado were both excellent.

[RobP]

Marjana Lipovsek with Claudio Abbado and the BPO was the winner selected by Ian Burnside. Their interpretation of the fifth and final song is astonishingly good and 'sealed the deal' for me.
Another fine BaL with Iain Burnside being inclusive in the main with the exception of Bernstein's excesses, a judgement which I endorse.

Interesting choice even if Lipovsek's lower register can be a touch too Clara Butt like on occasion. Abbado's Mahler generally leaves me cold, but there was some emotional engagement. But I have several live versions with Ludwig, Fischer-Dieskau etc and the Baker, all of which leave a more lasting impression than Lipovsek.

[vinteuil]

I enjoyed this a lot, many thanks to Iain Burnside.

As so often, intriguing the recordings that were not included. I am a big fan of Brigitte Fassbaender : I wondered why we were given the egregious Celibidache, rather than her performances with Chailly and Tennstedt.

But there was much to enjoy in most of the extracts. I did think that Bryn Terfel was rather drowned by Sinopoli's Philharmonia...
.