*** Mahler

DAS LIED VON DER ERDE: Siegfried Jerusalem, Jessye Norman, James Levine, Berlin Philharmonic

(DG)

The stars of the Met's most recent Parsifal take it on the road to Berlin for this rendition of Gustav Mahler's sublime song cycle -- which they recorded in 1992 but for some reason has been withheld till now. It's a sumptuous, slowish reading that confirms Levine's reputation as a Mahler conductor and begs the question why RCA doesn't have all his recordings of Gustav's symphonies in the catalogue. Jerusalem's heldentenor is rich but occasionally lacking in variety and characterization (in his previous Das Lied effort, with his other Parsifal crowd, Waltraud Meier and Daniel Barenboim, he sounds like a different singer); Norman is similarly beautiful and less precious than usual, though her concern for precise enunciation still tends to blot out her phrasing. The Berlin Philharmonic, gorgeous as always, gives the singers plenty of room, but it's an odd, almost two-dimensional aural perspective, devoid of distance or atmosphere, and the last orchestral bars of "Der Abschied" sound unforgivably mundane.

-- Jeffrey Gantz