Album: Mahler, Lieder eines Fahrenden etc/ Gerhaher/Nagano/OSDM (Sony)

The contained beauty of Christian Gerhaher's voice is but a small part of his art.

Here, as in his recitals with Gerold Huber, the intensity comes from his attention to the text and the ebb and flow of consonance and dissonance. Kent Nagano directs a clean performance from Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. The obsessive love, raw misery and the yearning for oblivion are all vividly realised, "Ich bin der Welt…" simply devastating.