• In a new recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Champs Hill), usually for huge orchestra and two soloists but here in the piano autograph version, the contralto Claudia Huckle and tenor Nicky Spence, with pianist Justin Brown, capture all the vitality and intensity of this orchestral song cycle, completed in 1909: from the first entry of the tenor, who hurtles in on high with his Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow, to the infinite tenderness of the contralto’s Der Abschied, which in its half-hour length matches the total of the five songs that precede it.
Huckle had the idea to do the piano version during lockdown, feeling that post-pandemic life might never allow her to sing the work in concert. Let’s hope she does. She is perfectly suited, and has ideal musical companions in Spence, and in Brown, who helps you hear the orchestral colours in his playing. Das Lied, an impassioned if lopsided work, becomes more approachable on this scale – a good way in to a work that can seem overwhelming.
