Violeta Urmana's lighter soprano (compared to Otter) suits the chamber-music delicacy of the Rückert songs well, and it's good to hear her in excellent form after her disappointing contribution to Boulez's dullest-in-history Das Lied von der Erde. The three shortest songs come first, followed by "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen", and finally "Um Mitternacht". Urmana catches the inward quality of the former extremely well, if perhaps not quite with Janet Baker's or Christa Ludwig's almost supernatural purity of timbre and intonation, and she's just terrific in the final song, with Boulez giving the piano and harp plenty of exposure and controlling the brass as effectively as anyone ever has. It's a stunning piece of conducting in a song that usually winds up defeating the singer.

Anne Sofie von Otter's contribution to the Kindertotenlieder finds her on the same high level as her colleagues. Temperamentally, she seems ideally suited to the suffocating sorrow of the opening song, and she understands the need to avoid any trace of preciosity in "Wenn dein Mütterlein". Both she and Boulez really but loose in the final song: this has to be one of its finest performances on disc, not just for Otter's barely controlled fury in the opening verses and her exquisite legato in the final lullaby, but also for Boulez's ability to bring out the violence of the writing at all dynamic levels. The Vienna winds really do themselves proud here, and this isn't a group about which that can be said very often. This is also one of the very few recordings that permits you to hear the low, marimba-like tones of the celesta at the very end--and how important they are to Mahler's sound palette!

The recording, as you may have gleaned from the above commentary, captures a great deal of orchestral detail very faithfully. I also like the natural balances, with the voices not too close but rather cushioned in the orchestral fabric as they would be in live performance. At times this means that the orchestra necessarily dominates, but then this is Mahler after all, and if you want to hear voice, and nothing but voice, there's always Bellini. My only quibble is a slight lack of body to the instrumental textures at the lowest dynamic levels, but otherwise this is first class. God knows how many recordings I have of this music, but when I feel like listing to any of these songs, it will be difficult not to reach for this disc first. [2/14/2005]