BaL 20.04.24 - Mahler: Kindertotenlieder

[Pulcinella]

1500
Building a Library

Iain Burnside chooses his favourite recording of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.

Gustav Mahler composed his song cycle Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) between 1901 and 1904 for voice and orchestra. The texts are poems by Friedrich Rückert, selected from the 428 poems he wrote in the 1830s as an outpouring of grief following the illness and death of two of his children from scarlet fever. Mahler's Late Romantic settings reflect the poems' mixture of feelings: anguish, fantasy resuscitation of the children, resignation, and ending in a mood of transcendence.

160 entries on the Presto site here:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/works/57465--mahler-kindertotenlieder/browse

If anyone more adept at filtering results than I am could sort the list into orchestral and piano versions, please feel free!
Or indeed baritone/mezzo!

[Pulcinella]

Previous winner/recommendations.

Gustav Mahler
Kindertotenlieder
Hilary Finch
11/10/2003

Recommended version:

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe (conductor) (recorded 1955)
EMI 567556 2 (CD)

Also recommended:

Janet Baker (mezzo), Halle Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli (conductor) (recorded 1967)
EMI 566981 2 (CD)

Heinrich Rehkemper (baritone), Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein (conductor) (recorded 1928)
NAXOS 8.110152-3 (2-CD)

[Pulcinella]

Text (and translation) as part of the Wiki article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertotenlieder

[Petrushka]

I prefer to hear these songs sung by a baritone as the poems are clearly from a male perspective and my usual 'go to', on the few occasions when I choose to listen to them, is Hermann Prey with Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

[Roger Webb]

I prefer to hear these songs sung by a baritone as the poems are clearly from a male perspective and my usual 'go to', on the few occasions when I choose to listen to them, is Hermann Prey with Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

I agree, my number one baritone choice is Thomas Hampson/Vienna/Bernstein on DG taken from live concerts. Christa Ludwig/Karajan for mezzo....but I do have Baker/Barbirolli as well.

[oliver sudden]

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.

[Roger Webb]

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.

Well Ronald Kinloch Anderson produced it so it's down to him really

[HighlandDougie]

The recording of Brigitte Fassbaender with the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Sergiu Celibidache from a 1983 performance is really very special. I'm tempted to say hors concours as I can think of no other of the many performances I've heard over the years which has had such an impact on me. But is it a BaL choice? I hope that at the very least it gets a mention.

[Pulcinella]

This cycle has not yet appeared on a BBC MM CD.

Two versions here:
JB/Halle/JB (two incarnations; I'm now intrigued and need to listen out for the glockenspiel).
Hermann Prey/RCO/Haitink (inconveniently spilt across two CDs in a Philips 2CD set of orchestral songs).

[smittims]

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).

[oliver sudden]

This cycle has not yet appeared on a BBC MM CD.

Two versions here:
JB/Halle/JB (two incarnations; I'm now intrigued and need to listen out for the glockenspiel).
Hermann Prey/RCO/Haitink (inconveniently spilt across two CDs in a Philips 2CD set of orchestral songs).

No you don't! Ignorance is bliss! Don't let that spoil it for you! If I could unhear that I would do so in a twinkling!

[richardfinegold]

I agree, my number one baritone choice is Thomas Hampson/Vienna/Bernstein on DG taken from live concerts. Christa Ludwig/Karajan for mezzo....but I do have Baker/Barbirolli as well.

I’m afraid that the Ludwig/ Karajan recording imprinted me here

[CallMePaul]

I have Fassbaender/ Chailly and Mingardo with a chamber ensemble (in a version made for the Society for Private performances of Music). Somewhere I think that I have the DFD/ Bohm recording on HMV as an LP but have not played it for years. I would like to think that a darker baritone such as Florian Boesch or Matthias Goerne would record the cycle with either piano or orchestra, while on the distaff side I am surprised that Nathalie Stutzmann has never recorded it (her only Mahler recording appears to be the 3rd Symphony with Andrew Litton and the Dallas SO).

[Roger Webb]

I’m afraid that the Ludwig/ Karajan recording imprinted me here

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'?

[gurnemanz]

Baker/Barbirolli, Ferrier/Walter and Ludwig/Karajan, as referred to.

Also:
Christian Gerhaher with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony, taken from concert performances
Brigitte Fassbaender with Riccardo Chailly is another favourite
Heinrich Rehkemper and Jascha Horenstein, as mentioned as the historic choice in 2003 BaL (loved apparently by Benjamin Britten)

Most recently, Cornelia Kallisch with Michael Gielen and SWR Sinfonieorchester on the Hänssler Mahler Symphony collection.

The piano version gives valuable perspective in hearing some details differently. Only piano recording I have is the excellent pairing of Stephan Genz with Roger Vignoles on Hyperion Mahler Lieder disc.