Magdalena Kožená / Christian Gerhaher / The Cleveland Orchestra / Pierre Boulez
Gustav Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn / Adagios from Symphony No. 10
Wholenote Discoveries - February 2011
Magdalena Kožená is joined by the admirable baritone Christian Gerhaher in twelve selections from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn song cycle on the Deutsche Grammophon label. This is a live performance with The Cleveland Orchestra and completes the cycle of Mahler’s orchestral works recorded by Pierre Boulez over the past 15 years with various orchestras. Unfortunately the rustic charms and barnyard humour of these early songs of Mahler’s do not seem particularly well suited to the über-urbane Boulez, who adapts some curiously strait-laced tempos and, with the exception of Gerhaher’s chilling account of the militant masterpiece Revelge, delivers a generally mundane though admirably dapper performance. Boulez redeems himself utterly however with his supple, near-ideal rendition of the posthumous Adagio from the incomplete Tenth Symphony. This highly chromatic, searching movement culminating in a shattering, ten-note dissonance points to the future and as such is clearly dear to his heart. The Cleveland Orchestra yet again distinguishes itself as the finest band in the land.
Pierre Boulez adds the two last missing bricks to complete his Mahler discography on Deutsche Grammophon. Recorded live in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra the program brings together the early orchestral song cycle from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, featuring mezzosoprano Magdalena Kožená and baritone Christian Gerhaher with the late Adagio of Mahler’s fragmentary Symphony No. 10.
Price: $15.98