Bo SKOVHUS
Esa-Pekka SALONEN
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Los Angeles Philharmonic
 60646 - Available on CD |
I. Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde wav (1,142k) | real audio wm 30sec: 28.8 | 56.6 | T1 | |
It's difficult to believe that never in his decades-spanning recording career has Plácido Domingo sung the music of Gustav Mahler. The legendary tenor has the widest range of any opera singer in history, but somehow he has never recorded the songs of the last great Romantic composer until now. Fortunately, he has chosen to make his debut with one of the most exciting conductors of Mahler in the world today, Esa-Pekka Salonen, in a performance of the rarely-heard tenor/baritone version of Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth).
Mahler wrote Das Lied von der Erde as a large-scale symphony for two voices and orchestra, with the lyrics coming from German translations of Chinese poetry (taken from a German book called The Chinese Flute). The work touches on themes of death, fate and departure, and is the most personal of Mahler's symphonies. He could have called this his tenth symphony, but did not because of superstitions surrounding the fact that Beethoven, Bruckner, and Schubert had each supposedly only composed nine symphonies. Typically Das Lied von der Erde is performed with a tenor and an alto, but this recording features the less-often-heard version for tenor and baritone, with the estimable Dane Bo Skovhus.
Esa-Pekka Salonen has now recorded three major works by Mahler with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. About the most recent, the Third Symphony (SK 60250), Classic CD had this to say: "I don't remember hearing another recorded performance which scores quite so truly in quite so many areas" and the Sunday Times of London said, "this is a superb performance. The LA Philharmonic ranks among the top four or five American orchestras and, under Salonen, it shows its profound musicality as well as the virtuosity of all its departments."
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