Gustav Mahler claimed that he had known the collection of poems called
"Des Knaben Wunderhorn," compiled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano,
since his earliest youth. In fact, no fewer than half of his songs draw on
verses from this collection, including quotations found in Symphonies
Nos. 2-4 and other works. Between 1892 and 1895, the young conductor of the
Hamburg Opera set to music 12 poems from this collection - the songs
"Revelge" and "Der Tambourg'sell" followed in 1899. The Wunderhorn settings
administered the death blow to the late-Romantic literary and psychological
art song. Mahler felt the Wunderhorn lyrics, the expression of a collective
subconscious, to be "essentially different from all kinds of literary
poetry, being more nature and life - that is, the sources of all poetry -
than art." Leonard Bernstein leads soloists Lucia Popp (soprano) and
Walton Groenroos (baritone) along with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
in this recording of all twelve songs.
