Christian Gerhaher's recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in a version with piano featuring tenor Piotr Beczala and pianist Gerold Huber. This recording of Das Lied von der Erde does not represent a preliminary stage in Mahler's compositional process but stands alongside it as its equal. The piano version of Das Lied von der Erde is more daring and at the same time more intimate, forcing the singers to sing in a different, more subtly nuanced, way than they would with an orchestra, while listeners are obliged to listen more intently and to prolong the abstract sound in their imaginations until it acquires the rhetorical colour that is implied by Mahler's music.