The vocal lines swirl like high-flying birds - they don’t harmonize so much as spin perilously in and out of each other’s orbit. The harmonies in the instrumental ensemble move slowly, close to stasis, as if trying to drag the voices out of the ether and down to earth.
It’s hard to know what to call this music, though it must be a challenge to perform, and the musicians on this recording do exemplary work. It is harder still to explain the cold shiver it induces.
Perhaps it’s due to all the space in the music. “Requiem’’ does not work by overwhelming a listener; a simple chord from a harp, a piercing entrance by a soprano, or a simple change from major to minor each carry an outsize emotional charge.
Whatever the secret, do not be surprised if its seemingly simple songs about swans, witches, and death remain in your memory to haunt your dreams. DAVID WEININGER
SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 4; MAHLER: ‘‘Das Lied von der Erde’’
Kurt Sanderling;
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (ICA Classics, DVD)
The difference between Kurt Sanderling and Erich Leinsdorf is black-and-white — or it would be if this ICA Classics DVD weren’t in color. On the podium, Sanderling (who died in September, two days short of his 99th birthday) resembles a deftly dancing walrus — Pierre Monteux without the mustache. He slashes away with his baton as if he were auditioning for an Errol Flynn movie. This Schumann Fourth (from 1988) opens with a kind of sigh, and it has more sweep than Leinsdorf’s reading, and more of a sense of tension and release. Yet it doesn’t necessarily build to a bigger effect.
What really distinguishes this release from ICA’s Leinsdorf DVD is the camera, which tries to focus on every orchestral detail. That can be distracting, though it pays dividends in Mahler’s ‘‘Das Lied von der Erde’’ (also from 1988), particularly when it’s spotlighting the trumpet in ‘‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’’ or the oboe in ‘‘Der Einsame im Herbst’’ or the English horn in ‘‘Der Abschied.’’
