Customer Reviews

Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn Maureen Forrester (Vanguard)

5 star:		(3)
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This is a super version. Forrester and Rehfuss provide a sensitive and perfectly styled delivery for these sophisticated/simple songs, and the orchestral accompaniment provided by Prohaska and his Viennese musicians is exactly right. Critical opinion, however, differs in this regard, and there are those who strongly prefer Schwarzkopf/Fischer-Dieskau/Szell (EMI), Baker/Evans/Morris (also EMI), or Ludwig/Berry/Bernstein (SONY). It's safe to say these songs have benefited from excellent recording over the years. This one is my current favorite. The recorded sound is very good.

I must concur with my fellow reviewer of April 11, 1999 by saying that this is a very good performance/recording (1963) of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn-Lieder-anthology indeed! While maybe (?) not as highly acclaimed an artistic triumph as the Fischer-Dieskau/Schwarzkopf/Szell or Quasthoff/von Otter/Abbado or Bonney/Goerne/Fulgoni/Winbergh/Chailly albums, I can find nothing wrong with this particular recording. On the contrary, I find that all of the songs are being performed - when compared with those recordings that are usually considered the best - on a consistently high artistic level across the whole board. If I may be allowed to quote the eloquent and ever insightful Tony Duggan of MusicWeb (who is himself a champion of this specific recording): "[these are] songs that should have about them an air of homespun simplicity, even roughness. Down the years many have wondered whether the sophistication, mannerism and intelligence presented by [Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf] is ultimately too restricting". And that is where this specific recording comes in!
To my ears, the music making on the album under review is some of the best, pure and simple. Well, pure indeed, but certainly not 'simple'! 'Warmly sympathetic' (or maybe even 'freshly unsophisticated') would be more to the mark when describing the general 'tone' or 'character' of the performances. Both Maureen Forrester and Heinz Rehfuss have a beautifully full and rounded sound, with fine, clear diction, and with beautiful nuancing of deeper word meanings, I think. I especially like Rehfuss' voice, which has a nicely ringing, clear but warmly sympathetic timbre. His stylish, sensitively articulated 'Lied des Verfolgtem im Turm' I find maybe the best performance of this song I have ever heard. Generally, the singers are recorded rather closely, but I personally like that very much, allowing them to focus more on finer coloring and diction, which is exquisite in both singers, especially, to my ears, Heinz Rehfuss.
As for the orchestral playing under maestro Felix Prohaska, it is crisp and genial. The orchestra sounds a little recessed behind the soloists; it is ever clearly present, but the soloists obviously take center stage.
I for one have happily discovered, with this recording, a freshly sympathetic, colorful and consistently rewarding 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' that is just that little bit 'different' (generally 'light' of character), but fitting nicely in with all of my other favorite recordings of this anthology. (Well, yeah, maybe it doesn't plummet the depths of the emotions like for example the magnificent Anne Sofie von Otter & Thomas Quasthoff with Abbado, but it IS a highly consistent pack of artful, freshly genial performances which hold one's attention from beginning to end). So, with only a slight reservation - this is may not be THE 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' to own, and a lot comes down to your own taste, but who could do with only one version anyway -, I would really like to recommend it to anyone else as well.

This is a wonderful and essential recording from the whole mahlerian
discography. Prohaska, Forrester and Rehfuss deliver a great rendition
that brings us all the darkness, gothic and medieval atmosphere of these
songs. Not into the operatic and contra-natura mannierisms that we find
in other modern and more polished recordings, Prohaska left us the real
way to approach and to perform the Wunderhorn. An absolute essential for
every advanced Mahler collection.