This is a very nice recording of Mahler’s early songs, culminating in his first great song cycle, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). It’s performed by an accomplished group of singers and the British pianist Joseph Middleton, whose sensitive musicianship provides a strong anchor for this second volume in Signum’s survey of Mahler Lieder.

Among the singers, top marks go to the Austrian mezzo Sophie Rennert, who is consistently strong in all the selections assigned to her. She opens the recording with the charming Frühlingsmorgen, displaying her velvety, burnished instrument and precise diction. Rennert’s command of colour and dynamics are most apparent in the delicate Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald, and she gives it a lovely conversational quality. She switches into a more emphatic gear in Hans und Grete and the martial Aus! Aus!, in which she articulates a woundedness born of rejection, one of Mahler’s eternal themes. 

German soprano Katharina Konradi makes quite the impression in Ablösung im...