When Mahler died in 1911, Das Lied von der Erde was one of the two masterpieces that he left completed but unperformed. The score does suggest tenor and baritone as alternative soloists to the preferred tenor and contralto, but very few of the outstanding recordings of the work have opted for that all-male pairing; of the 20th century’s outstanding Mahler conductors only Leonard Bernstein recorded Das Lied with a baritone, the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
