There is a particular fascination in encountering a great composer's first attempts to master a genre that would become central to his artistic identity. Gustav Mahler's early songs are often overshadowed by the orchestral song cycles and the Wunderhorn settings, yet they already reveal an imagination acutely responsive to poetry, an instinctive feeling for dramatic pacing and an ear that could transform the smallest harmonic inflection into emotional revelation, combining sardonic humour with underlying seriousness.

Mahler: Lieder der Jugend – Songs of Youth and Awakening makes a persuasive case that these works deserve far more than occasional anthology status. As well as a generous selection from his three books of Lieder und Gesänge from the 1880s, it also includes two of his three early Lieder of 1880, and his first great song cycle, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfarer’) of the mid-1880s, in its original version for voice and piano.

Joseph Middleton has established himself as one of today's most imaginative collaborative pianists, and his curatorial intelligence is evident throughout this recital, in partnership with four singers of contrasting voice types. Rather than treating these songs as juvenilia, Middleton presents them as the record of a composer steadily discovering his voice. The programme unfolds with an almost narrative inevitability (enhanced by the pianist’s intelligent observations in the booklet notes), allowing recurring themes – nature, longing, transience and youthful idealism – to emerge naturally while tracing Mahler's gradual emancipation from the worlds of Schumann, Brahms and Wolf.

Middleton's pianism is the recital's constant source of illumination. These accompaniments rarely aspire to the symphonic breadth of Mahler's later song writing, yet they demand exceptional sensitivity to texture and colour and the ability, as Middleton notes, to ‘think orchestrally’. Yet he resists any temptation to inflate them artificially, instead, deploying their orchestral effects in a fundamentally pianistic manner. He finds remarkable variety within the songs’ modest dimensions, carefully balancing inner voices, allowing harmonic tensions to register without undue emphasis and shaping phrase endings with an instinctive sense of breathing alongside the singers.

The four vocal soloists bring distinct personalities that enrich rather than fragment the recital. Katharina Konradi sings with luminous ease, her bright, focused soprano perfectly suited to Mahler's youthful lyricism. She possesses an enviable clarity of diction, and her ability to colour repeated phrases ensures that even the most straightforward strophic settings remain psychologically alive. Particularly impressive is her refusal to sentimentalise; emotional warmth arises from textual engagement rather than vocal indulgence.

Mezzo-soprano Sophie Rennert contributes performances of striking poise and depth. Her warmly upholstered, velvety voice lends gravity to songs exploring loss and introspection, while her finely controlled legato allows Mahler's expansive melodic lines to unfold with unaffected naturalness. There is a quiet authority to her singing that never seeks attention for its own sake. Instead, she inhabits each poem with thoughtful restraint, finding expressive weight in carefully judged dynamic gradations rather than overt theatricality. Best of all is her deeply affecting performance of ‘Nicht wiedersehen!’, which concludes the selection from the Lieder und Gesänge with exquisite poignancy.

Tenor Mauro Peter proves an ideal interpreter of Mahler's more youthful, ardent inspirations. His voice combines brightness with an appealing conversational directness that serves these songs exceptionally well. Peter has an instinctive feeling for the marriage of text and melody, and he negotiates Mahler's often awkwardly grateful vocal writing with apparent ease. His phrasing remains supple throughout, while moments of heightened passion retain an admirable elegance, avoiding any tendency to over-project emotions that are often deliberately intimate.

It’s fascinating to hear the nascent symphonic genius in several of these songs: ‘Ablösung im Sommer’ (breezily sung by Konradi) later served as the purely instrumental (and considerably expanded!) third movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, while ‘Hans und Grete’ lent its main theme to the Ländler-like second movement of the First. In other songs, fleeting gestures or harmonies anticipate familiar Mahlerian thumbprints; characteristic modal turns, folk-like melodic twists, sudden harmonic shadows and unexpected emotional ambivalence appear repeatedly. Yet there are others that seem to reach back to a Schubertian inheritance, and even the songs of Beethoven. Drawing all these strands together is Middleton himself, who together with his singers responds keenly to the combination of naivety and world-weariness, irony and earnestness that is Mahler’s hallmark. Listen to the way in which he deploys the depressed sustaining pedal to telling but very different effect in ‘Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz’ (Peter) and ‘Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald’ (Rennert). The programme is full of such memorable details, too numerous to list here.

For the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Middleton is joined by an artist of long experience in the German song repertoire: baritone Simon Keenlyside. His voice has a degree of graininess that proves an expressive asset in these songs of turmoil, loss and resignation. There is an immediacy to his storytelling in which every word seems weighed for its dramatic significance, every inflection carefully considered, without ever sounding calculated. His performances are a constant reminder that the art of Lieder depends as much upon verbal imagination as vocal beauty. Middleton has already recorded this set on a Signum disc devoted to the three well-known song cycles, with Sarah Connolly, but this separate performance in the context of the other early songs shines a subtly different light on them. Even the falsetto high notes of ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’ betray a knowing wink, as if the ghost of that great character tenor Gerhard Stolze had suddenly taken hold of proceedings.

The recorded sound is exemplary. Voices are placed within a warm yet detailed acoustic that preserves textual clarity while allowing the piano its full tonal spectrum. Whether in Potton Hall (for the Keenlyside cycle) or All Saints, East Finchley, producer/engineer Simon Kiln captures Middleton's subtle touch with particular success; delicate filigree passages retain their transparency, while fuller textures never become congested. Balance remains consistently natural, reflecting the chamber-scale intimacy essential to this repertoire.

Ultimately, this album succeeds because it neither exaggerates the historical importance of these works nor diminishes their intrinsic musical value. Middleton and his distinguished colleagues illuminate a neglected corner of the repertoire with intelligence, stylistic assurance, genuine affection and an essential pinch of irony. The result is more than a valuable documentary survey: it is a compelling recital that reveals the seeds of Mahler's mature genius while reminding us that even his earliest songs possess an individual voice capable of moving, surprising and rewarding repeated listening.