Much has been written about Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, and deservedly so. Das Lied is undeniably one of the most passionate and compelling works in all of classical music. Mahler himself described it as “…the most personal composition I have created thus far.' Das Lied was composed in 1908 on texts from Hans Bethge's 'recently published “The Chinese Flute'. Mahler was very taken by the vision of earthly beauty and transience expressed in Berhge’s translations and chose seven (two of them used in the finale) to set to music.

Mahler had already included movements for voice and orchestra in his Second, Third, Fourth and

Eighth Symphonies. However, Das Lied von der Erde is the first work giving a complete integration of

song cycle and symphony. The form was afterwards imitated by other composers, notably by Shostakovich and Zemlinsky. This new form has been termed a 'song-symphony', a hybrid of the two forms that had occupied most of Mahler's creative life.

This new recording of Mahler’s masterwork features two of the great Mahler singers of our generation - Siegfried Jerusalem and Cornelia Kallisch. Jerusalem is no stranger to Das Lied, and has recorded it several times previously. Cornelia Kallisch’s previous recordings of Mahler for hänssler CLASSIC include her critically acclaimed performance of the Kindertotenleider (hänssler CD 93.062) .