I am most certainly "a voice man" but in the end DLVDE is primarily about two voices with orchestral accompaniment, just as opera must be "voice-led", I think. Of course I care about the quality of the conducting and the orchestral playing but do indeed consider them subservient to the vocal element.
I agree about the vocal side of the Gielen recording. The orchestral part is up with the best, but the vocalists unfortunately do not stand comparison to the top performers of the 1950s~1970s. And your survey mainly comes from the vocal side, while Tony Duggan came from the orchestral side. So, I imagined that was why you left it out.
As for the Sanderling, it surely is a matter of taste, but like Tony Duggan or Dieter, I also think that Peter Schreier is an asset rather than a burden. For German language repertoire I would rank him any time (or most of the times) above Fischer-Dieskau. His diction and understandability are exemplary without the latter's excessive squeezing of meaning. Also, his voice is still in good shape in 1960, although surely, he never had Wunderlich's power. But who has? And then there is Sanderling, of course. The recording successfully brings out some of the constant moral ambiguity and precariousness in Mahler's music, in contrast to many other recordings that are on the "straightforward" side. So maybe it does deserve another listening...
I listened to that recording on YouTube (it's in excellent sound). Gielen and the orchestra are certainly very fine. I do not find Jerusalem's slightly cloudy tenor to be as clean, powerful and penetrating as my favourites and I am afraid that I actively dislike Kallisch's rather thin, acidic timbre - nor is she as expressive as Baker, Norman, Ludwig, Baltsa or Ferrier. Personal taste, of course - but there you are.
Ralph, thank you for the wonderful survey.
I just wondered about the inclusion of the two versions mentioned in the title, Gielen with Jerusalem and Kallisch, and Sanderling with Schreier and Finnila. The Sanderling version received highest praise by Tony Duggan, and Gielen's recording - a Mahler interpreter in high esteem with Duggan - came too late for the Duggan survey. At least the orchestral part is excellent by any account, and it is quite easily available as a download. Anyway, it seems to me that both might deserve inclusion in a future edition.
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