The Japanese baritone Hidenori Komatsu may be an Ozawa protégé but he has very little to offer avid Mahlerians–or to just plain music lovers. His voice is at best undistinguished, at worst ugly and piercing, and his singing slips frequently out of tune as soon as the register goes up or the music modulates. The overall tempos are obsessively lethargic and certainly don’t help the performances sound more exciting. The Kindertotenlieder totally lack contrast, drowned as they are in a sea of indifference and dullness. How could such painful music inspire the performers to nothing beyond tediousness? The prevailingly heavy, elegiac tone also hopelessly mutilates the more humorous items among the Songs of a Wayfarer and Rückert Lieder (why only four of them?). You have the feeling that the baritone doesn’t really understand the meaning of the texts he’s singing. Cord Garben’s conducting of the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover sounds as though he’s fed up with a thankless task: he shows little care for orchestral balance, characterful phrasing, or Mahler’s detailed dynamics. A bore–even at Naxos’ price.
