Reckoning

Due to his burgeoning conducting duties, Gustav Mahler worked in only two genres, the song and the symphony. Thus, his songs assume an extraordinary importance in his output, and he often employed melodic material from his songs as the basis for some of his symphonic movements. 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' a collection of orchestral songs written between 1892 and 1899, are settings of poems from an anthology of folk poems of the same title compiled by Arnim and Brentano.
At the time of this 1968 recording, 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' was not yet well known. In fact, the only previous recording was Wyn Morris' performance with Janet Baker and the London Philharmonic. George Szell elicits fine performances from the London Symphony Orchestra and two luminary lieder specialists Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The songs range from the military flavor of "Der Tamboursg'sell" sung so robustly by Fischer-Dieskau, to the delightful "Lob des hohen Verstandes" in which Schwarzkopf ends the song with a donkey's bray!