This piece is fantastic, not only because of the density of the text, but because of the lyrical nature itself. I absolutely love Mahler. With how slow the piece itself goes, it is nice to hear the text by itself. In a way, it’s very matter of fact about the emotional state of the narrator, ready for death, lost to the world. It’s relatable because of the feeling of despair. Mahler was bi-polar, and I don’t doubt that he could connect to this text because of the depressive side of his own emotions.
Waltraud Meier has a weight of her voice which I love. You can really hear how open German vowels can be with her voice in words like gestorben and glauben. She does a really nice job of working the ending e’s in words like “lange.” She vibrates through each pitch but keeps the word accent modest so that you still understand the words. Something to note is her interpretation of the word “weltgetümmel” which sounded less ooo and more uh. I wonder why that is. She really understands the rubato and you can really hear how exposed her voice as it sings with the orchestra. She is beautiful…
These two interpretations are vastly different. Janet Baker has a much more subtle tone it seems. Where Meier had a lot of weight to her voice, Ms. Baker uses, in some places, a more breathy tone. I wish I could hear more doubled consents in words like gekommen and vernommen. I love the clarity in her tone on the high notes, and how easily she descends down the scale. Her ending [x] consonants are softer than I expect them to be, but the language choices she makes seem to go well with the mood of the piece. I also enjoyed the word “wirklich” that she used, accenting the [v] to spin into the word.
The choral version is interesting, because what you feel in the weight of the sound you lose the tempo of the original. There is a sense of loosing time with the Mahler original, and in this place it is replaced with a moving ethereal grace. As you noted, the consonants in this are pretty clean. It’s incredible to hear a choir with that kind of precision and dynamic.
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