Dietrich Henschel, Boris Berezovsky - Mahler: Complete Wunderhorn Songs (2013)

The performance of the complete Wunderhorn Lieder requires an artist who understands the musical and vocal import of these songs, but also their dramatic content. What is needed, therefore, is a singer-actor. And on this album Dietrich Henschel is the one. A major talent of Henschel's is to extend his theatrical abilities to the lied recital.

Mahler's piano versions of the Wunderhorn lieder represent the sole option for those desirous to record the complete set, but the piano option is not merely a negative choice. According to Donald Mithcell, "the orchestra is there, locked with the piano accompaniments andy struggling to get out". The piano versions are so suggestive of the orchestral texture and coloring, and they are so much more transparent with respect to Mahler's contrapuntal interlacing, that nothing is lost in the hands of a good piano player.

This is where Boris Berezovsky enters the picture. Boris has performed in the most prestigious concert series of our time, and he is reputed for his colorfully grandiose playing which is just the thing to show the orchestral sonorities and textures. Since Mahler’s orchestral lied settings do not always converge with a singer’s needs (or rather: since few orchestras know how to tailor their performance to a singer’s needs), the piano version is a more viable alternative, if at least it is performed by a player who knows to bring out both the grandeur and the poetry in Mahler’s music.