First the bad news: Christopher Maltman sings a pretty lousy Songs of a Wayfarer. He sounds more concerned with diction than with meaning. Final consonants are bitten off and over-articulated, resulting in a choppy, unmusical, non-legato delivery that makes hash out of the actual tunes, particularly in the first two songs. You can scream through the third and get away with it, while Die zwei blauen Augen’s gentler, simpler lyricism requires a bit less in the way of “interpretation”. If you compare Maltman to singers like Prey or Fischer-Dieskau (among the men) or Baker and Ludwig (among the women), it’s clear just how unlovely and uncomprehending his performance is. Benjamin Zander’s conducting is pretty good, save for his exaggerated take on the opening bars of the very first song, and the sonics, here and in the symphony, are warm and clear.
The main problem with Zander’s performance of the symphony, which actually is very good, simply stems from the excellence of the competition. He’s always sensitive to Mahler’s special effects: the careful placement of the offstage brass at the beginning, or the characterful observance of string portamentos and those “struck with the bow” sounds in the scherzo. Indeed, the first two movements go splendidly, the first awakening by imperceptible degrees and then nicely fresh-sounding, and the scherzo rollicking along with infectious vigor. The funeral march sounds just a touch under tempo, and while the Klezmer episodes are well done, there’s a certain lack of character and casualness about the whole thing that renders the movement somewhat dull. Toss in Zander’s audible gasping and the missing cymbals just before figure 17, and it’s not very atmospheric or characterful.
It has to be admitted that the Philharmonia isn’t a particularly idiomatic Mahler orchestra. Of course the horns are magnificent, but the trumpets and trombones are weak, and this makes the finale something distincly underwhelming despite Zander’s efforts to keep things moving. At the beginning and the end the cymbals are seriously under-played and under-miked, and the two big tam-tam crashes are completely inaudible. The concluding peroration also sounds curiously flat, with the thrilling final bars lacking both impact from the lower brass and a true thunderous rumble from timpani and bass drum. Again, it’s the sort of performance that really sounds decent until you start making comparisons with the best of the competition. Then its shortcomings stand out pretty graphically.
For example, compare this rendition to Kubelik’s far less-impressively recorded reference edition on DG, which also features the Songs of a Wayfarer (with Fischer-Dieskau) as its coupling. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra certainly is not a better ensemble than the Philharmonia, but the woodwinds and trumpets have extra personality, the strings really dig at the opening of the finale, and the performance bristles with a tension and excitement that Zander and his tepidly committed players can’t equal. In short, this is a decent, professional effort that starts out well, and in the final analysis fails to deliver the goods. As for Zander’s by-now customary included discussion of the music, I didn’t listen to it. Life is too short, and if the music-making isn’t outstanding, who cares?
