"Song of the Earth" Top 5 - you can't go wrong!

[Scion7]

I own six, these are the five I recommend.  Jessye Norman, bless her, just doesn't come across for me with Davis/LSO - her Fidelio is very good, though!  That one just doesn't get played.  But these I play in rotation pretty often in the living room. 
Of all the Mahler pieces, I think this is his very best work.  And he never got to hear it!

          better click the image - the forum shrinks up big images somewhat





Oct 2023:  I suppose when the forum software changed a while back, it swallowed my original post - all that's left is a summary photo of all the individual pictures?  Le sigh ...

[North Star]

There's no image in your post

[Scion7]

hang on-had to fix a boo-boo ......

Fixed. 

[springrite]

Well, I still have no idea which are the 5 that you'd recommend.

[zamyrabyrd]

Klemperer,Ludwig,Wunderlich is the emblematic performance for me.

ZB

[springrite]

Klemperer,Ludwig,Wunderlich is the emblematic performance for me.

ZB

That one, also one from Szell that I really like. But the best LIVE that I heard was Giulini/Vicker/LA Phil.

[DieNacht]

Clicking on one of the photos in the OP will give better pictures and some detailed remarks from Scion7

[zamyrabyrd]

That one, also one from Szell that I really like. But the best LIVE that I heard was Giulini/Vicker/LA Phil.

I heard a less than successful version with Vickers, but maybe that wasn't the same performance.

ZB

[springrite]

I heard a less than successful version with Vickers, but maybe that wasn't the same performance.

ZB

The one I heard was Giulini's last concert at LAP, when at the beginning he surprised everyone by announcing that he is leaving so he could be with his ailing wife. "She has done everything for me throughout my life. Now it is time that I be there for her." Appropriately, the two works happened to be The Unfinished Symphony and Song of the Earth (Vicker, Quivar). I think the emotional nature of that evening got the best out of everyone.

Indeed, I know people who went to the weekend ones (I went on Thursday, the first) and those who went to Thursday and a later one, and they tell me the later ones weren't particularly special, though good.

[Mandryka]

I like the Klemperer record with Anton Dermota and Elsa Caveti, Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Also there's one with Baker which I like with Kmentt, Kubelik conducting which I remember enjoying.

[mc ukrneal]

Klemperer/Ludwig/Wunderlich is of course a classic and wonderful. I also loved Bertini. Ben Heppner is amazing here - really grabs you from the first note.

[eyeresist]

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[not edward]

I'll vote for only one, not just because it's a clear favourite, but because it defines my view of the work in a way that few recordings do (Ancerl's 9th symphony is the other example for me in Mahler):

Baker/Kmentt/Kubelik.

No histrionics from Kubelik, just every telling detail unobtrusively there and fitting naturally into a perfectly shaped narrative.

Waldemar Kmentt bringing off the knife-edge that is staying just this side of crazy in the first song...and doing a fine job in his other two.

But of course, you don't buy a Das Lied for the tenor. You buy it for Janet Baker at her very best...

[kishnevi]

So many possibilities!
I don't have all the ones you posted, but the Reiner was my first recording of DLvdE, and for many years my only one.  The Klemperer is overall good, but personally I prefer the Bernstein recording with Ludwig and Kollo, and the Krips recording with Fischer Dieskau and Wunderlich--I think both singers were better in those than with Klemperer (and Fischer Dieskau was better than he was in the much more celebrated, and admittedly excellent,  Bernstein Vienna recording).  Although the sonics might be an issue with the Krips.  And there are several others that are topnotch, but it's next to impossible to winnow them down to three or four, so I won't even try.

[Mandryka]

Klemperer/Ludwig/Wunderlich is of course a classic and wonderful. I also loved Bertini. Ben Heppner is amazing here - really grabs you from the first note.

Indeed but do try the first recording. Klemperer's playing is is wonderful and the two soloists -- Dermota  especially -- are outstanding. The sound is historical.

[eyeresist]

Indeed but do try the first recording. Klemperer's playing is is wonderful and the two soloists -- Dermota  especially -- are outstanding. The sound is historical.

I'm pretty sure he mentioned it because he HAS heard it already.

[mjwal]

Top performances of Das Lied von der Erde (of the 18 I know/have heard and have been listening to since last summer, on and off): Rosbaud, Reiner, Jochum.
I have yet to listen to the Giulini on Testament. Bruno Walter live with Forrester and Lewis was better than his studio efforts, but the sound is poor. I have never heard: Karajan, Giulini DG, Tennstedt - or several others of course.
I could wish the Rosbaud or Klemperers had Maureen Forrester (the best alto singer of all) or Nan Merriman - but I put the Rosbaud first because it is the one performance that brings all the orchestral voices and layers together in a completely transparent manner while phrasing each separate strand at the highest level of taut expressivity; the "soloists" are not so overbearingly important as in other performances. Rosbaud has a male soloist, Melchert, who avoids sounding merely nobly beautiful or poignant (Wunderlich - EMI) - apart from Patzak (Walter Decca), Dermota (Klemperer Vox)and Haefliger (Jochum, van Beinum) he is the only male soloist who achieves an idiomatic tone (several tenors, like the egregious Vickers, murder the fin-de-siècle German language, which ought to sound a bit Viennese IMO), and he has a more heroic voice than they do (I have heard Haefliger and Jerusalem in concert, and they both got swallowed up by the orchestra in places).
I can put up with the vocal inadequacy of Rosbaud's Grace Hoffmann, who is a superior diseuse (rather that than the bathtub of sentiment one is plunged into by Ferrier); Klemperer's Elsa Cavelti (Vox), however, puts my teeth on edge, as does the sound of that Vox recording - and Christa Ludwig (EMI) leaves me indifferent as usual. Chacun à son goût, I'm sure others react quite differently. I am in two minds about the Kubelik: it deliquesces rather too much for my taste, Janet Baker is just a tad too angelic (shades of Gerontius!) for me, while Kmentt, though idiomatic, is rather slapdash.
I mean to listen to the Sanderling again: listening to his Heldenleben recently with enthusiasm has made me want to revise my first rather underwhelmed reaction some years ago - and Schreier is very interesting.

[Drasko]

Rosbaud has a male soloist, Melchert, who avoids sounding merely nobly beautiful or poignant (Wunderlich - EMI) - apart from Patzak (Walter Decca), Dermota (Klemperer Vox)and Haefliger (Jochum, van Beinum) he is the only male soloist who achieves an idiomatic tone (several tenors, like the egregious Vickers, murder the fin-de-siècle German language, which ought to sound a bit Viennese IMO), and he has a more heroic voice than they do

You are making me seriously want to hear the Rosbaud. Patzak and Dermota are my favorite tenors in Das Lied, even if Patzak strains a bit and Dermota is so forward in the recording mix that he could be singing sotto voce and still ride the orchestra. I'll have to check this Melchert then, thanks.

[Leo K.]

Here is my brief list:

Top Five:
MTT/SFSO/SFSO
Kubelik/BRS/Audite
Boulez/VPO/DG
Horenstein/BBC Northern/BBC
Klemperer/NPO/EMI

Honorable mention:
Sieghart/APO/Exton (Pristine sound)

Overall, I prefer the tenor and baritone version of this work, the best one being MTT's, which is stunning in performance and sound.

[Herman]

he is the only male soloist who achieves an idiomatic tone (several tenors, like the egregious Vickers, murder the fin-de-siècle German language, which ought to sound a bit Viennese IMO), and he has a more heroic voice than they do (I have heard Haefliger and Jerusalem in concert, and they both got swallowed up by the orchestra in places).

well, hello. In that case the blame lies with the conductor, and to a degree with the composer, who's doing two two mutually exclusive things at the same time. Huge sound from the orchestra and a single voice.

I don't know why it should be that surprising that the seventies Haitink recording is so good. Haitink is a major Mahler conductor.

The Giulini recoring with Brigitte Fassbaender and Araiza is very good too.

I just can't abide Kathleen Ferrier and her "suffer, suffer, suffer" voice. My bad.