Whatever curse that has made Claudio Abbado and Berlin one of the most interpretively comatose musical partnerships in the world certainly seems to be working here. Anne Sofie von Otter and Thomas Quasthoff are generally fine soloists, but what a bore this disc is! The orchestra (and its conductor) seem to be sleepwalking through the music, frequently ignoring the composer’s carefully graded dynamics, and in some cases (notably the percussion in “Der Schildwache Nachtlied”) they simply leave out entire parts. The miniature nature of most of these songs doesn’t permit the wind section to scale the heights of ennui achieved in their recent “Das Lied von der Erde” under Levine, but they certainly do try. To make matters worse, DG still hasn’t figured out—any more than in that “Das Lied”—how to balance voices against an orchestra. The soloists are way too close, making it impossible to set the volume at a level that places them at a comfortable perspective. In short, a dud.
