Recordings of piano versions of musical behemoths can come across as mere financial expediency, but in the case of the autograph piano score for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, there are plenty of reasons to give it a whirl. Not only do the leaner textures clarify the composer’s intentions, the singers can dispense with some of the sheer heft and focus on the subtleties of the text. Furthermore, this is an outstanding performance by any standards. 

Anglo-German contralto Claudia Huckle was inspired by conflicting feelings as she weathered the UK’s first lockdown. “One thing I realised during that beautiful spring of 2020 was that if I never performed again, my greatest regret would be never having sung Das Lied von der Erde,” she writes in her elegant sleeve note. “As the cancellations kept coming in, it became clear that we would need something substantial to occupy ourselves. My husband sensibly went back to university and did a second degree. I took Das Lied von der Erde off the shelf and decided:...