"Song" to Remember

On the podium was 83-year-old Bruno Walter, who learned the works of Gustav Mahler from the composer himself. Standing beside him was a singer scarcely more than a third his age--Maureen Forrester, 29, the contralto whose big-time career was launched under Walter's baton. With the forces of the New York Philharmonic last week, Conductor Walter and Contralto Forrester gave Carnegie Hall audiences an unforgettable performance of one of Mahler's greatest works, Das Lied von der Erde, whose premiere Walter conducted in Munich half a century ago.

Although The Song of the Earth consists of six songs translated from the Chinese, Mahler himself thought of it as his ninth symphony, refused to call it that only because of his fear that, like Beethoven and Bruckner, he would not live long beyond the ninth. The work is roughly a catalogue of the emotional ages of man, beginning in "life's sweet-scented morning," and concluding with the peaceful resignation of "The Farewell" ("My heart is still and waits for its deliverance"). Walter's intense performance last week wonderfully illuminated the score's leafy detail, and the orchestra under his baton played with an ardor and mellow tone it rarely displays. As for Contralto Forrester (ably joined by Tenor Richard Lewis), her velvet-piled voice floated over the orchestra with effortless power, adapting itself in a remarkable range of nuances to the work's shadow-flittery moods.

For Montreal-born Maureen Forrester, the performance was one more demonstration that she now stands in the front rank of contraltos--although it is only nine years since she walked fresh from a church choir to the studio of her teacher, Dutch Lieder Singer Bernard Diamant, who told her, "You don't know how to sing." Having worked hard with Diamant, she gol her big break in 1957 when Walter hired her for one of the solo parts in Mahler's Second Symphony with the Philharmonic Although she sings some contemporary works, she prefers the songs of Hugo Wolf excerpts from Wagner, Mahler. Said she before going onstage last week: "I fee every word, but I have to keep the feel ing under control. I sing Das Lied as if I'm looking on, not as if I'm living it."

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