Daniel Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin in concert in Berlin, Vienna, and New York. Also included is a 22 minute documentary on the musical world of Mahler as seen by Barenboim and Pierre Boulez.

This release is Erwin Stein's chamber arrangement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4. In 1921, Arnold Schoenberg organized a series of private concerts, performed by small ensembles. Schoenberg and Stein combined their ingenuity and created "sophisticated versions" of important orchestral works. These arrangements were usually for a few woodwinds, a string quintet, percussion and piano. Stein also added a harmonium, which was quite rare at the time but the organ adds a unique timbre to this arrangement.

In this great program of music, Daniel Raiskin and his Koblenz Orchestra prove they are at the highest standard, producing superb sound and very musical playing.

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This new release is the third installment in the successful ongoing Mahler cycle by Adam Fischer and the Duesseldorfer Symphoniker. Adam Fischer writes in his booklet notes: “I am delighted to perform and record the complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler with the Dusseldorfer Symphoniker. The result, we hope, should be something special: a rendition that stems from an active collaboration in which we mutually inspire one another. This should not be “my” Mahler, but “our” Mahler… Gustav Mahler premiered his First Symphony at the age of 29. For personal reasons I feel a close bond with that 29-year-old Musical Director of the Hungarian State Opera. 120 years later, I was named General Music Director of the same opera house. We both hastily abandoned the institution after 2 ½ years. I would still like to relate a personal reminiscence of one of the performances of “my” First Symphony. The First Symphony was the first occasion I ever heard music by Mahler live on stage: in Vienna when I was nineteen years old, and the experience marked me for life.”

This C Major 2DVD/1Blu-ray disc release of Gustav Mahler’s Symphonies №s 1 + 2 initiates a complete Mahler cycle project with Paavo Järvi conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra well-regarded for their Mahler recordings, as witnessed by its highly successful cycle on CD under conductor Eliahu Inbal some thirty years ago. + As an enlivening bonus feature, each symphony in this new cycle will feature an explanatory, in-depth introduction by Mr. Järvi. + “Mahler’s 2nd was given a brilliant interpretation by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony.” (Die Zeit)

Valery Gergiev conducts the World Orchestra for Peace live from the 26th BBC Prom at Royal Albert Hall with soloists Camilla Tilling.

In celebration of his 80th birthday, this four-disc set spans more than five decades of Michael Tilson Thomas' compositional career. It features 18 works, from premiere recordings to remastered archival recordings available for the first time. The deluxe collection also includes an extensive booklet containing composer's notes, original essays, and a timeline of archival photos chronicling MTT's life as a pianist, conductor, composer, recording artist, and teacher.

All proceeds from GRACE: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas will be donated to brain cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco Brain Tumor Center.

This is a very fine live performance of Mahler's Fourth. Gerard Schwarz has many ideas about the music, and they work very well. Consider, for example, his adroit tempo adjustments in the first movement's third subject group, bringing out all of the music's playful character. In the scherzo he slows down dramatically for the trio sections, but justifies his choice by encouraging the woodwinds to project extra vividly, and they certainly rise to the occasion. The Adagio is aptly serene in the calm portions, anguished yet appropriately flowing in the minor-key variations. The "heaven opening" climax toward the end sounds grand, but not shrill.

Schwarz has found an excellent soloist in soprano Maureen Mackay, indeed one of the better singers to take the part. She has the right lightness of tone, the right innocence, and no feeling of strain in her upper register. The audience is very quiet, but for some reason the recording level is substantially higher in the scherzo than elsewhere, which is distracting. Still there's a lot to enjoy here, and if you know the symphony well you will surely relish many of the details that distinguish this performance and give it real personality.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

MAHLER Symphony No. 6, “Tragic” • Gerard Schwarz, cond; Royal Liverpool PO • ARTEK 46 (78:36)


Gerard Schwarz’s Mahler cycle, recorded in 2005 but appearing on silver disc just now, continues with this solid reading of the Sixth Symphony. While for me it misses the deeply felt angst of the Bernstein-Vienna Philharmonic version (DG 427697, on two CDs), it certainly would not discredit anyone’s collection. In many ways it resembles Bernard Haitink’s first Concertgebouw version, which I always rather liked until Bernstein pinned me to the wall.


One feature of this recording that scores points over both Haitink and Bernstein is the transparent, almost 3D orchestral detail achieved by engineer David Pigott, and in this very difficult work I commend him highly. One of my complaints with so many modern classical recordings, particularly orchestral, is the tendency towards ambient goop that distorts details. Schwarz and Pigott have outdone themselves in making every string pizzicato, bell, piccolo, and muted horn passage sound with extraordinary clarity. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so particular about this aspect had this been a symphony of Haydn or Beethoven (though they, too, deserve proper balance), but I’ve always considered Berlioz and Mahler to be special cases, which is one reason I have (and appreciate) very few monophonic recordings of either composers’ work. In addition to the instrumental clarity, Pigott also uses the wide range that digital recording makes available to present a “terraced” sound in which one can discern quite clearly the many fine gradations that Schwarz achieves—not only pianos and mezzo-fortes and fortissimos, but also pianissimos, sforzatos, and every shade in between.


For a good comparison of Bernstein’s reading to Schwarz’s, listen to the last few minutes of the first movement. With Schwarz, everything is in place, conducted at steady tempos that almost border on metronomic, the varied sections of the orchestra diverging and coalescing towards a splendid climax. Then listen to Bernstein: a flatter perspective, not as discrete an orchestral texture, and a tempo that works its way from somewhat slow and trudging to a martial pounding that almost seems to want to burst your speakers. The orchestral sound is much rawer, but so is the feeling: the flutes and trumpets almost sound hysterical, at the end of their emotional rope. A tightening of tempo is suddenly relaxed for a few seconds before the last eight bars come crashing down around you.


Schwarz and annotator Barbara Heninger are at odds on the order of the middle movements. Heninger says that though the second score edition and Mahler’s own performances placed the Andante before the Scherzo, “he is said to have wished his original order restored in later years. It is in this order, Scherzo followed by Andante, that the symphony is generally presented, as it is in today’s concert.” She then discusses Scherzo before Andante, but Schwarz follows the opposite route. Personally, I like this sequence better, if for no other reason than that the Scherzo resembles the first movement too closely to follow it immediately. Schwarz’s reading of the Andante suspends time: one is not aware of a forward momentum so much as a floating of slow notes in space. I’m not sure I like the effect, but it is different and consistent with Mahler’s own description of it as an ascent into the calm, pastoral atmosphere of the hills.


The third movement (Scherzo here) is the most disappointing, completely lacking the grotesque feeling that both Haitink and Bernstein achieved, though it is beautifully played. The opening of the last movement also misses the ecstasy of yearning for something better that is later countermanded by the mounting tension, but again one hears orchestral details not always evident in others’ recordings. The hammer blows are stunningly engineered, and the closing minutes of the Symphony are as powerful as anyone’s.


A good reading, then; a little quirky at times but showing an independent mind filtering the score and finding a few different things in it. I still wouldn’t consider it a first choice. Bernstein-Vienna and Haitink’s readings of the score strike me as more valid, but it’s certainly worth a listen.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

"The recording of Mahler’s Ninth offers a fine interpretation, with a particularly well conceived reading of the first movement. As spacious as his conception of this piece may be, it is also possesses a dynamism that makes it compelling...As he would do later with the Ninth, Schwarz maintains a sense of direction that allows the structure to emerge in the opening movement of the First Symphony." - Opera Today

A New York Times 25 Best Classical Track Selection for 2019

This "in memoriam" album contains two recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, made 42 years apart: the performance from 1971 (first authorized release) and the performance from 2013 at the Salzburger Festspiele (first release on these formats). Mahler's No.6 was a central piece in Gielen's repertoire. The contrast between the two performances is dramatic, essentially expressing the full range of Gielen’s approach to Mahler. The German conductor, Michael (Andreas) Gielen, studied under Erwin Leuchter in Buenos Aires (1942-1949), then under Josef Polnauer in Vienna (1950-1953). He held several positions with prestigious ensembles across Germany until finally taking directorship of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg in 1986. Micael Gielen also taught orchestral conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum until he became an emeritus professor in 1995.

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REVIEW:

This release pairs performances of the same symphony with the same orchestra that could not be more different. The first, from 1971, is shimmering, vigorous and pretty good — but the second, from 2013, is the real deal: so slow, dark and heavy that it feels, by the end, truly like horror in sound.

– New York Times (David Allen)

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Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 is the last and only unfinished symphony in his complete oeuvre. On September 5, 1910 Mahler wrote his last notes: exactly 100 years later, the 23-year-old conductor and composer Yoel Gamzou presented with great success his new reconstruction of this extraordinary work. The world première with the International Mahler Orchestra took place at the Ryckestrasse synagogue in Berlin as part of the Jewish Cultural Days 2010. Yoel Gamzou first came in contact with the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony when he was about 12 or 13 years old, whilst fishing curiously amidst a jungle of books and scores in a local library. Already at first glance, it was obvious to me that this symphony has – or indeed would have had, considering it was almost lost and forgotten for decades – a unique meaning in musical history. "When I discovered that it was only the first movement of a large unfinished symphony, I instantly started investigating. I became indescribably fascinated and intrigued, in fact hypnotized, by the sheer magnitude of meaning and content hiding within this manuscript. It was immediately clear to me that the piece was entirely thought-through and that the meaning behind this hurried testament was an almost unbearably painful albeit thoroughly planned legacy. It seemed like the sketch was staring at me demanding to be heard, like a message in a bottle that hasn't really been found, let alone entirely understood, for almost a century.“ - Yoel Gamzou