GUSTAV MAHLER
Symphonie Nr. 4
Helmut Wittek (Solist des Tölzer Knabenchors), Sopran
Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
1987
Deutsche Grammophon
CD 000289 423 6072 3
» Had Benjamin Britten, a great admirer of the work, ever recorded it, he might have thought of sing a boy soloist; but he didn't and so, in the absence of any pre-emptive strike by the Aled Jones Road Show, it has been left to Bernstein to make the break by signing up a remarkably assured chorister from the famous Tölzer Boys' Choir, Helmut Wittek. He is a fearless vocalist with a generally clean top register and a bottom B that puts most of his soprano rivals out of court. He rather yodels the second bar of his solo and skimps the fermata at fig. 14 where he is allowed by an indulgent great-uncle Lenny to toboggan his way spectacularly down to that bottom B. Elsewhere, showing a healthy boyish disregard for pernickety shadings of tone and rhythm, he concentrates on giving a fresh, extrovert, musically confident account of the Wunderhorn verses, helped by good diction and some nice wordpointing. "Who have you cast for the soprano solo?" asked Mahler in 1904. "She must be capable of singing with a naïve, childlike expression, and with particularly good diction!" Wittek has both. «
GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE, August 1988, S. 48
» Mr. Bernstein is currently convinced that the angelic rapture of the vocal part is better conveyed by a boy soprano than by a woman. He used a boy when he performed the score at Carnegie Hall in 1984 with the Vienna Philharmonic, and here he has Helmut Wittek, another member of the Tolzer Boys Choir.
The young Mr. Wittek is a first-rate boy soprano; he sings with real skill, and the vocal coloration is indeed effective. «
NEW YORK TIMES, 2. Oktober 1988 (John Rockwell)
