I am recently back in Vermont from a trip to Boston for two performances of Das Lied with the transcendent Christianne Stotijn and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding. I have waited 50 years to hear it live.
Harding is very good and deeply committed, though maybe he has not yet met the shadow of mortality to give a little more delicacy and inwardness to aspects of his conducting this most moving of works. The depth of sound of a great orchestra in a fine hall in this work is revelatory. Michael Shade, the tenor, was very effective if not as magical as Wunderlich on the Klemperer recording (probably aided by microphone placement, though what a beautiful voice).
Stotijn, whom I have met twice, is unbelievably moving and committed. She sets aside the score for the Abschied and enters the music completely, and she said that singing it she feels like a priestess, which she certainly was in both performances. It was like hearing a spiritual Maria Callas with a gorgeous voice in Mahler.
I love both the Walter 1952 recording and the Klemperer 1964 (in very fine sound on the Esoteric SACD mastering). But neither recording comes close to hearing the live performances I attended, and especially Christianne Stotijn's profound embodiment of the mezzo-soprano songs.
I still have the music of these performances going through my memory.
I, too, am sad that Mahler never heard Das Lied, but I am so grateful that he lived long enough to make it an immortal gift to all of us.
Tom in Vermont
