MAHLER Symphony No. 3 1. BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 2 • Jascha Horenstein, cond; 1 Helen Watts (a); 1 Dennis Egan (posthorn); 1 Denis Wick (tbn); 1 Highgate School Ch; 1 Orpington Junior Singers; 2 Claudio Arrau (pn); 1 London SO & Ch; 2 French Natl RSO • ARCHIPEL 557, mono (2 CDs: 145:01) Live: 1 London 11/16/1961; 2 Montreux 9/17/1962


Sometimes you come to appreciate some of the conducting legends of the past when you have first listened to one of the conducting duds of the present, and that was my experience with this Mahler Third. I had just suffered (yes, I believe that is the precise word) through Carla Delfrate butchering the music of French opera composers when I put on this Mahler Third. The difference in musical intelligence, feeling, phrasing, rhythmic lift, and correctly judged tempos was like escaping the River Styx and being elevated to Valhalla.


Yet even without such a quantum leap in conducting quality, one cannot escape the feeling that this Mahler Third was indeed one of the great, even momentous, concerts of the 20th century. Shockingly for such a late date, this was its first professional performance in England, and those familiar with Horenstein’s work will know that the British were extremely lucky to have him for this concert. Just about the only negative thing one can note about this recording is the somewhat dry mono sound—good for a 1961 broadcast (indeed, better than Horenstein’s equally legendary Mahler Eighth) but still restricted in sonics. But heavens, what a performance! I actually think that Horenstein’s performance of the first movement even outstrips that of Georg Solti, which up until now was my all-time favorite reading of it, largely due to the more finely detailed layering of the instrumental texture. Despite the boxiness, you hear everything, and every instrument or instrumental group seems to have something important to add to the overall “story” of the music. Nor was I alone in my reaction: At the end of the movement, the London audience does something highly uncharacteristic for the British at an orchestral concert: they roundly applaud the first movement. It’s quite an achievement, and it seems almost incredible that this is its first-ever commercial release.


Moreover, unlike Solti (and even unlike his Nonesuch studio recording of this Symphony with the same orchestra), Horenstein’s intensity and musical drive never slacken in this performance, not even for a millisecond. Seldom have I heard the second movement played so exquisitely, the strings singing sweetly and the rhythmic underpinning simply astonishing. Many years ago, before I began reviewing, I bought, heard, and was disappointed by James Levine’s Mahler Third recording, and I was only slightly more impressed by a live performance he gave with Jessye Norman as the mezzo soloist in Carnegie Hall. I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it, but this Horenstein performance has everything right about it that Levine simply got wrong. Perhaps too much “devotion,” too much psychoanalyzing Mahler at the time he wrote it, and too little of just digging into the score and translating it into sound? It’s hard to say at the remove of 40 years, but let’s just say that Horenstein has the full measure of this Symphony while Levine only had a fair idea of it.


Now, one should be aware that Horenstein’s view of the score is not always 100 percent what Mahler wrote. He sometimes ignores tempo changes and gives his own spin on the music, but to my ears everything he does in this performance works well. Not to keep beating the same drum, but that first movement is an excellent example. In the studio recording, it went along at an almost dirge-like pace; here, it is utterly dynamic and thrilling. In both the studio and live versions, the posthorn solo is beautifully played by Dennis Egan, and this is one moment in this broadcast where the sonics are good enough to give the listener a fine sense of “space.” Helen Watts’s singing is rich and beautiful, although not quite as expressive in detail as Janet Baker with Michael Tilson Thomas (Sony-CBS) or Ewa Podle? with Antoni Wit (Naxos), my other two favorite Mahler Thirds. The Highgate School Choir is superb, having that sound that one somehow instinctively associates with British children’s choirs. Horenstein’s tempo in the last movement is brisk when compared to other Mahlerians (21:13 compared to Tilson Thomas’s 26:13 or Wit’s 25:31), which some listeners may interpret as a race to the finish on Horenstein’s part, but just listen to the feeling he elicits from the LSO; and, at this clip, the movement lacks its usual “draggy” feeling, as if it were an interminable exercise in bathos. Now, of course, it can and does also work well at the slower tempos that Tilson Thomas and Wit use, but that is the magic of Mahler. His symphonies, unlike almost any others I can think of, can withstand nearly any and every tempo change one can put into them. The only thing they cannot withstand is a boring reading, and boring is not a word one can apply to this performance.


As a bonus (since the entire Third Symphony clocks in at a few seconds under 90 minutes) we age given an equally spectacular reading of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with Claudio Arrau as soloist. My readers know that I like but do not really love Arrau as a pianist; everything he played was good and usually had the right style, but many of his performances and recordings are no better than those of several other pianists. Here, however, he truly sounds caught up in the moment, not least due to Horenstein’s exquisite shaping and phrasing of the music. Although I still love Fritz Reiner’s dynamic 1954 account with Rubinstein and Max Fiedler’s old-world and slightly eccentric (but still musical) performance from the early 1930s (with Alfred Hoehn as soloist), there is just something so shapely and well-phrased about Horenstein’s reading of the orchestral part that it grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. Arrau takes a while to heat up—his entrance is played very well but not with any particular abandon, but then just listen to the way he responds with both remarkable fire and stunning nuance to the equally nuanced playing of the French Radio and TV Orchestra. The best way to describe this performance, overall, is as an alternation of a singing line with ebb and flow against the dramatic outbursts, the latter never dull but also never so explosive that they ruin the line of the music. Oh, there are many of those among our young conductors today who could learn a thing or three from Horenstein about phrasing! True, the strings in the last movement sound a little scrappy, but no matter. The musical treatment and intensity of this performance trumps technical polish.


Archipel provides absolutely no liner notes with this release, not even a sentence or two to tell prospective buyers who Jascha Horenstein was. Even though I know that a recording like this is aimed at the collectors’ market, that very few people will bother with a 53-year-old mono recording of the Mahler Third when they can get digital stereo from Tilson Thomas, Wit, or the late Claudio Abbado (another outstanding version), but I still feel that the label owes it to those few who are under age 30 and buy this release to let them know who Horenstein was and explain his importance. Otherwise, I recommend this set highly.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

16.99

Gustav Mahler wanted his Second Symphony to exceed any known format - and he also wanted it to tackle the key questions of existence: "Why have you lived? Why have you suffered? Is everything just one enormous, terrible joke? We have to solve these questions in some way if we want to carry on living," said the composer. Similar questions preoccupied him throughout his life, and with a special intensity during his time as an opera conductor in Hamburg. The Second Symphony, also referred to as the "Resurrection Symphony", is a complete expression of Mahler’s existential struggle; both its form and its overpowering sound make this utterly clear. The symphony took several years to compose – it was written between 1888 and 1894. In September 1888, the first movement – which at this point still bore the title "Totenfeier” (“Funeral Rite”) – was already complete. The second and third movements were not written until 1893 and Mahler only completed the entire work in 1894. Like most of Mahler’s symphonies, the work follows a "Per aspera ad astra" pattern (“through difficulties to the stars”). Starting with a funeral march in the main theme of the opening movement - the passing of a life full of vigor, pain, blows of fate, and only a few brief and beautiful moments - the symphony concludes with a triumphant resurrection movement. The premiere of the complete symphony took place on December 13, 1895 in Berlin under Mahler's direction; previously (on March 4 of that year) he had already performed the first three movements. The premiere of the Second Symphony thus took place after that of the Third. The reactions were initially subdued, but today the work ranks as one of the most popular of Mahler’s symphonies.

Rafael Kubelik's excellence in Mahler can almost be taken for granted. In general, his live performances offer a higher degree of risk-taking than his studio efforts, which show more care for balance and proportion (generally with no loss of excitement, it must be stressed). The pattern holds here in this live Ninth, recorded in Japan in 1975. A horn bobble here and there notwithstanding, the Bavarian orchestra plays with fire and conviction, and somewhere along the line it has acquired a decent sounding tam-tam, which does wonders for the first movement's dramatic final collapse. The performance resembles Kubelik's Deutsche Grammophon recording in most respects. His "live" tempos are a bit more contrasted in the Rondo:Burleske, and he gets punchier accents from the muted brass in the first movement, resulting in creepier quiet interludes. The finale still moves along at a flowing tempo, rising to a positively incandescent principal climax. NHK Radio's sonics make the BRSO strings sound thinner than they do on DG, but surely closer to an actual concert experience since in all other respects the balances faithfully reproduce the dynamic nuances of Mahler's score. Kubelik's way with this composer certainly was special, and no Mahlerian will want to miss this chance to hear him conduct the Ninth live. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Mahler’s "Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth) is subtitled “A symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) voice and orchestra". It examines the border between two different genres: the Lied, in its extended form as a song cycle, and the symphony. And as ever in Mahler’s music, that border is anything but black and white. The work certainly differs radically from a mere song cycle: the Lieder are permeated by symphonic techniques and some symphonic movements are built up from huge stanzas. Interludes expand to become development sections in which important things happen. Indeed, the thematic events take place in the orchestra, and, in a certain sense, the soloists also form a part of the interwoven orchestral texture. The sequence of movements also follows that of a symphony: In the weighty outer movements one clearly notices sonata form shining through the stanza structures, and symphonic processes are obviously taking place. Two inner movements take the place of the slow movement and sarcastic scherzo. The entire work is spanned by a taut arc, culminating – in accordance with the principle of intensification – in a huge final movement lasting as long as all the others together, and entitled Der Abschied (The Farewell). Here, Mahler is continuing the genre of the “Finale Symphony”, and the brightening of C minor to C major is even reminiscent of his usual apotheoses.

In this symphony, as in his others, Mahler wanted to "create a world using all existing technical means.” The formal design of the work is unique, and the demands it places on its performers are extreme. It requires two highly experienced Lied singers, who in combination with the huge orchestral apparatus have to be able to perform as soloists while blending into the symphonic structure as concert voices. An excellent and well-coordinated body of sound is needed here, and of course a highly competent conductor to ensure cohesion and to give spirit and soulfulness to such a large-scale work.

REVIEW

What is perhaps most immediately striking is the detail and brilliance of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s playing. Skelton makes a fine, handsome sound and offers something special in his moving reactions to the poetry. Kožená in her songs offers singing of supreme beauty. In fact, she sings almost too beautifully at times. Not a conventional Lied, perhaps, but a fascinating and beguiling one: highly recommended.

–Gramophone

Classical Music

This performance is also available on RCA Victor 68365.

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde

"I enjoyed this performance enormously. Davis's Mahler is perhaps too restless, too blatantly 'conducted' for some tastes, but his occasionally heavy-handed manipulations of tempo are at least symptomatic of a desire to communicate a personal vision of and affection for Mahler's score. Both playing and recording are of exceptional standard, even if the lack of ironic edge to the sound lends the music-making a somewhat old fashioned air (strikingly at odds with RCA's strident, pop-inspired packaging). Davis's scherzo is warm and characterful in a rather cumbersome Sort of way, but his slow movement is a marvel -elevated in feeling and blessedly free of the intrusive inflexions which mar an otherwise refreshing account of the opening movement. No more affecting account has appeared for a decade and only Maazel's Vienna Philharmonic produce such glorious string tone. After this, the finale disappoints just a little. The 'operatic' soloist does not really point her words with sufficient poignancy -nor does she seem willing or able to sing quietly in her upper register - and Sir Cohn again insists on playing up the composer's expressive hesitations, adding one or two of his own. This may not be wholly idiomatic Mahler and yet, like so many recent discs from this source, it has abundant humanity and an extraordinary lack of artifice. The sympathetic acoustic of the Herkulessaal, well caught, is great asset.

-- Gramophone [7/1996]

Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony is primarily regarded as the composer's reaction in the summer of 1908 to the diagnosis of a heart ailment, which he received just before writing the first sketches for the work. Mahler was deeply distraught and cannot have known how few years he still had left to live. His processing and exploration of his life experiences, and of valedictions, the meaning of life, death, salvation, life after death and love, always took playce in and through his music. The Ninth Symphony was composed between 1909 and 1920 in Toblach, in a kind of creative frenzy, and was first performed in Vienna on June 26, 1912 by the Vienna Philharmonic, under the baton of Bruno Walter. Mahler had already died on May 18, 1911, and was no longer able to experience the premiere of his last completed work. Willem Mengelberg, the first ardent conductor of the composer's works, wrote in his score: "Mahler's soul sings its farewell!" Mahler's Ninth Symphony represents the culmination of a development process. The progressive chromaticism and maximum utilization of the tonal are here taken to their limits - and, for the first time, beyond them. Indeed, the two movements that fram the work, in particular, depart from the tonal entirely, pointing clearly to the dawn of a new musical epoch. Alban Berg even called this symphony "the first work of New Music".

Conductor Adam Fischer reflects on Mahler’s Third Symphony: “Mahler’s entire output seems like one long farewell to me: it is as if he was bidding farewell to the past and likewise to the future, since he had a great fear of death. At the end of his symphonies we often encounter utopias, as here in the Adagio of the Third, and many years later, particularly, in the Ninth. Something new sets in, but the movement is still a closure. From it we learn that whatever is new will no longer occur in this world. The Third Symphony, on the whole, is one of Mahler’s richest: the individual movements are so different from one another that they almost seem to stem from different periods of Mahler’s life. The Third contains its own world in itself- already in the first movement, longer than most Beethoven symphonies. Then Mahler plunges into the Wunderhorn world: the world of simplicity where his style seems inspired by Schubert. He quotes from his own works and creates his own mythology. Just as in a grand novel, the same figures appear in different stories. The second and third movements belong together; then, a new dimension is introduced in the fourth one with the human voice. With the contralto’s first note, Mahler truly opens up a new world. This is a new kind of composition altogether. The measures almost seem to flow into one another; Mahler is freeing himself from the rigors of rhythmic bars… This abandonment of the rigorous diktat of meter represents a challenge for every conductor.”

MAHLER Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 1 • Bruno Walter, cond; 1 Nadine Conner (sop); 1 Mona Paulee (ms); 1 Westminster Choir; New York P O • MUSIC & ARTS 1264, mono (2 CDs: 132:17 & English only) Live: New York, 1 1/25 and 10/25/1942


Elsewhere in this issue I review a two-CD set of historic Bruckner symphony performances conducted by Bruno Walter. Here we have two more premiere publications of historic broadcasts, drawn from the same private collection recently acquired by Music and Arts, with the promise of still more to come. Their chief point of interest is that they are among the earliest recorded performances by Walter of works by the composer to which, far above and beyond any other conductor, he could claim a unique, profoundly personal connection, as Mahler’s longtime assistant and protégé, who led the world premiere performances of the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde . To be more precise, this is the earliest surviving Walter account of the “Resurrection,” whereas the “Titan” is preceded by a 1939 broadcast with the NBC Symphony.


Back in 34:6, in reviewing a 1950 Vienna Philharmonic broadcast of the Mahler Fourth that also made it into my 2011 Want List, I briefly surveyed all of Walter’s surviving performances of that work—12 in all. The First ranks second (got that?) in Walter’s Mahler discography, with nine extant versions, given variously with the NBC Symphony, London Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, Bavarian State Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. As in the similar tables in the Bruckner set review, if a particular performance has appeared more than once on CD, I have cited the best version currently in print (excluding versions included in large multi-CD anthologies); studio recordings are marked with an asterisk.




Date Orchestra CD or LP Issue (if any) Timings


04/08/39 NBC SO Music & Arts CD-1241 11:55 6:09 11: 19 18:04


10/25/42 NYP Music & Arts CD-1264 12:34 6:34 11: 27 18:55


10/16/47 RCO Tahra TAH 504 12:12 6:05 11:26 18:48


11/06/47 LPO Testament SBT 1429 11:47 6:05 10:38 17: 38


02/12/50 NYP Andromeda ANDRCD 9087 12:31 6:16 11:30 18: 50


10/02/50 BSSO Orfeo C 562 021 B 12:03 6:15 11:18 18:17


01/24/54 NYP Movimento Musica 01.106 12:20 6:17 11: 35 18:42


(LP only, Italy)


01/25/54 NYP Sony MHK 63328* 12:33 6:22 11:18 18:17


01/14 /61 CSO Sony SM2K 64447* 13:20 6:50 11:24 20:25


- 02/06/61


Again very much like Walter’s eight surviving performances of the Bruckner Ninth, the timings here indicate a remarkable stability in his interpretive approach among the performances pre-dating his March 1957 heart attack—and in this instance, even the 1961 studio recording differs in little else except the somewhat broader tempi in the outer movements. The sound of the 1939 NBC broadcast is surprisingly decent, a vast improvement on previous issues on other (and much less reputable) labels. For whatever reason, Walter’s 1947 performances in London feature noticeably quicker tempi than those of the same works in other venues. (A positively Toscaninian Beethoven Ninth issued by Music and Arts clocks in at a torrential 61:58, compared to his 1949 studio recording of 65:12, with most of the difference occurring in the first and third movements.) The London performance also unfortunately suffers from the poorest recorded sound (it is afflicted with noticeable tape wow and flutter) and sometimes dicey orchestral playing.


Several of these performances have been reviewed in these pages before, mostly with glowing praise. In 28:1 James H. North termed Walter’s 1947 Concertgebouw outing “magnificent ... a performance for the ages.” Jeffrey J. Lipscomb’s review of the 1950 Munich performance in 29:3 said that it “captures Walter’s artistry at its finest,” and he then placed it on his 2006 Want List. In 34:3 Boyd Pomeroy likewise lauded the 1939 NBC performance as “a reading of thrilling spontaneity, a combustible meeting of Walter’s totally idiomatic Mahler style with the distinctively bright, tightly focused expressive intensity of the NBC orchestra, which responds with total commitment.” He also commented briefly on the two 1947 renditions plus Walter’s two studio recordings, where his evaluations agree with those of his colleagues. The less positive reviews—Peter J. Rabinowitz on the 1950 New York performance in 13:3, and Arthur Lintgen on the 1947 London performance in 32:6—have faulted poor recorded sound rather than the interpretation. Except for finding the sound of the 1950 New York performance far more listenable than did Rabinowitz, I otherwise concur with all of the foregoing reviews and happily refer readers to them.


To their observations I will append a few of my own. The 1947 Concertgebouw and 1950 Munich performances feature a more mellow orchestral timbre than do those of their American counterparts, with Munich having the better recorded sound. However, the 1947 performance features the finest orchestral playing; it has a superior rendition of the treacherous double-bass solo in the third movement, and is the only live performance in which there is not at least one prominently cracked or blown note on the trumpets or horns (though such lapses are few and momentary in the other ones). The live 1954 New York performance cries out to be issued on CD; it has superior sound to the other live American recordings, and the crackling frisson of a live performance that the estimable studio account recorded the following day does not quite replicate. Unlike some critics who discount Walter’s 1960 account as relatively slack and a letdown from his previous versions, I still regard it as virtually nonpareil among studio recordings, even if I do prefer the greater tensile strength of the earlier monaural studio account. Mahler as a hyper-neurotic has been grossly overdone, and Walter’s balancing of what he called the Apollonian and Dionysian sides of the composer is a far more accurate view that reflects his own intimate acquaintance with Mahler’s personality rather than latter-day pseudo-Freudian projections upon it.


Unless and until the live 1954 New York account becomes available on CD, my top recommendations for the Mahler collector who wants a representative performance of the First by Walter would be either the 1947 Concertgebouw or 1950 Munich performance, along with the newly issued super-budget seven-CD set on Sony of all of Walter’s Mahler recordings for Columbia, just reviewed by Christopher Abbott as a “Classical Hall of Fame” entry in 35:6. As for this 1942 performance, while it is naturally a necessary acquisition for Walter collectors such as myself, it is a luxury acquisition for others; it is a typically excellent interpretation, but not sufficiently distinct from other and better-sounding Walter performances. Those desiring to hear Walter’s earlier thoughts on the work would do better to turn to the 1939 NBC outing.


Much the same can be said of the 1942 performance of the “Resurrection” presented here, though in this case there is considerably less competition. This is now the fifth performance by Walter of this work to appear in print, an extraordinarily high number considering the relative rarity of performances of it before the Mahler boom of the 1960s. As before, the following tables provide specific details. For all of the New York Philharmonic performances, Walter used the Westminster Choir; for the Vienna Philharmonic performance he employed the chorus of the Vienna State Opera Concert Society.


Date Orchestra / Soloists CD or LP Issue (if any)


01/25/42 NYP / Conner / Paulee Music & Arts CD-1264


05/15/48 VPO / Cebotari / Anday Archipel ARPCD 0082


12/05/48 NYP / Conner / Watson Bruno Walter Society BWS 1067/8


(LP only, Japan)


02/17/57 NYP / Stader / Forrester Music & Arts CD-1199(1)


02/17-21/58 NYP / Cundari / Forrester Sony SM2K 64447*


Timings for these are as follows:


Date Timings


01/25/42 22:06 9:59 10:18 4:40 32:30


05/15/48 22:28 10:53 10:56 4:38 34:47


12/05/48 22:20 11:24 10:54 5:13 34:35


02/17/57 21:30 10:36 10:44 4:39 33:01


02/17-21/58 21:37 10:35 10:43 4:11 32:26


Christopher Abbott reviewed and praised the deluxe Andante release (most regrettably out of print) of the 1948 Vienna performance in 26:6. (The current Andromeda issue, coupled with the 1950 New York performance of the First, appears to be a clone of the Andante issue, muddied with added bass reverberation.) Boyd Pomeroy (whose recent departure from these pages is a sore loss) waxed enthusiastic over the live 1957 New York performance in 34:5; an earlier issue (also by Music and Arts) was welcomed with equal enthusiasm by Abbott in 31:2, who also discusses the 1958 studio recording in his aforementioned recent Classical Hall of Fame entry in 35:6.


The Mahler Second is unique in Walter’s discography in being the only recorded work in his repertoire where his final performances are faster instead of slower than his earlier ones. Here, the 1942 performance is a few seconds behind the 1958 studio recording, and a bit ahead of the 1957 live performance, but all three are a few minutes faster than the two versions from 1948. As Abbott notes, this belies oft-repeated assertions that the post-1957 heart attack recordings led to a slackening of Walter’s interpretations; there is certainly no lack of energy and dynamism in this account. Moreover, this is a notable instance in which advances in remastering technology substantially alter discographic evaluations. The superlative deluxe Andante release of the 1948 Vienna performance transformed it from a dim-sounding mess to a listenable recording of considerable historic interest, even if in the process it revealed additional flaws (more on which anon). Boyd Pomeroy’s preference for the live 1957 performance over the 1958 studio recording was quite justifiable in light of the rather poor remastering that Sony produced of the latter for its “Bruno Walter Edition,” with a dry, constricted bass register. While this has been slightly but noticeably improved in the new boxed set reviewed by Abbott, that too would not be enough to change the assessment. But this evaluation must be radically altered once one hears the DSD (Sony SRCR 2334-5) or Blu-Spec (Sony SICC 20075-6) editions issued by Sony in Japan (the latter at least is already out of print, alas). Suddenly the entire frequency range is opened up to a hitherto unimagined degree, with a bass register that now has depth and warmth, and the choir finally emerging with the presence and impact one sensed it always had but felt was somehow imprisoned behind invisible sonic bars. (Special thanks to Fanfare reader and friend Robert Alps for both the information on these releases and for generous gift copies of them as well. Through him I have also just learned that by the time this review appears in print, Sony in Japan will have released some CDs in a newly upgraded sonic format, Blu-Spec2.)


Of these five performances, the one from Vienna in 1948 ranks a rather distant last place. While much improved by Andante, the recorded sound is still rather dry and boxy, with limited frequencies; the orchestral playing is surprisingly ragged (including a horrible cracked note in the crucial fifth movement trombone solo), and the choir not much better; and Rosette Anday’s wobbly, hollow-voiced attempt at the solo alto part is the kind of thing one hears on parody discs rather than in serious performances. This 1942 performance occupies the next-to-last position. It is very fine on its own terms, and if no other example of Walter’s art in this work survived it would be of immense value, but it is outclassed by all three succeeding performances. As in the 1948 New York performance (more on which shortly), the soloists and choir sing an English translation—revised by Walter himself—rather than the original German. Mona Paulee is a committed soloist, but her voice has more of a mezzo-soprano cast than the dark contralto one truly needed for the part. Nadine Conner, a Walter favorite for soprano vocal assignments who also sang supporting roles at the Met, fulfills her smaller role capably, and the Westminster Choir sings with power and enthusiasm.


In his typically superb program notes—which include fascinating details regarding behind-the-scenes negotiation of the Boston and New York orchestras with various musical figures and how these affected concert programming—Mark W. Kluge opines that this is “an account that is noticeably more rhetorical and dramatic than his later performances.” With this assertion I must respectfully disagree. Both the 1957 live and 1958 studio versions (the latter in its new Japanese remasterings) yield nothing on this score to the 1942, and indeed have more forward drive and energy. However, the real but frustratingly elusive prize is the live 1948 New York performance. It was released only in Japan on an ultra-scarce set of Bruno Walter Society LPs, though cassette and CD copies have circulated among private collectors as well. That is the performance to which Kluge’s observation rightly applies. It simply beggars superlatives—utterly titanic, of a white-hot intensity and level of interpretive inspiration that causes the limitations of a 1948 AM broadcast sound (superior to that from 1942) to fall away and leave one slack-jawed in dumbfounded amazement. In Rose Watson, Walter this time has the true contralto voice needed for the primary solo part; Nadine Conner repeats her fine rendition of her supporting role; both the Westminster Choir and New York Philharmonic play and sing as if their very lives depended on it, leaving their previous efforts trailing in the dust; and the audience roars and whistles its ecstatic approval at the close.


Music and Arts has done its usual superlative job with remastering and tape-to-disc transfer (by Aaron Z. Snyder and Eric Jacobs, respectively). These are both excellent performances that are necessary acquisitions for the committed Walterian such as myself. Anyone else who has the money and inclination to acquire them also will certainly get his money’s worth. The one major caveat is the existence of superior alternatives. Thus, an urgent personal plea to the good folks at M&A: how about issuing a two-CD set coupling the 1954 performance of the First and the 1948 one of the Second? That would be a must acquisition for every lover of Mahler and for collectors of historic recordings alike.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

SINFONIE NR. 4 G-DUR

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

The label of "Wiener Symphoniker" releases another memorable recording as a double CD with Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in a minor. Recorded under the direction of Chief conductor Fabio Luisi, this suspense filled live recording from 2011 focuses on the movement order authorized by Mahler himself first the Andante and then the scherzo.

Mahler: Symphony No. 6

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and their Music Director Riccardo Chailly have already acquired legendary status – glorious reviews and many awards for their recordings testifying to their continuing success. At Leipzig’s International Mahler Festival, to mark the centenary of Mahler’s death, they performed his monumental Second Symphony in the Gewandhaus – together with two marvellous soloists and choral forces quite beyond compare. About the final movement the composer said: “The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.” The painting "Morgenrot" was chosen by internationally acclaimed artist Neo Rauch to feature on the cover of this release on DVD and Blu-ray.
Recorded live at Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, 17 and 18 May 2011.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French
Running time: 95 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

Classical Music

Classical Music

DAS LIED VON DER ERDE

Classical Music

Sometimes known as 'The Tragic' - a title suggested but then withdrawn by the composer - Mahler's Sixth Symphony embodies much of the inner turmoil and superstition of its composer. Conceived at perhaps one of the happiest periods of Mahler's life, it seems to foreshadow the personal tragedies that would later befall him - with his wife Alma writing that "The music and what it foretold touched us deeply." Esa-Pekka Salonen's work with the Philharmonia for the City of Dreams: Vienna 1900-1935 concert series has produced a number of powerful, live concert recordings for the Philharmonia series, including Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique and Mahler's Symphony No.9 - all of which have been praised by criticsfollowing their release on Signum. ' ... the orchestral playing was of a very high order ... his command of the intensely difficult finale was wholly admirable, moving towards that astounding, deeply moving, coda with fine artistry.' Robert Matthew-Walker, Classical Source.com (Review of the concert of this recording)

Thanks to his unusually strong affinity with Haydn and grasp of classical structures, Josef Krips proves a near-ideal conductor for the Fourth Symphony. Noting Mahler's repeated 'nicht eilen' ('don't rush') markings, Krips never hurries the music or indulges in unnecessary point-making, least of all in the radiant variations of the poco adagio third movement. The score unfolds with natural charm and warmth, lovingly communicated by the LSO's string section - led by Hugh Maguire, whose 'Death the Fiddler' is gauged at just the right level of grotesquery. With Suzanne Danco a pristine soloist in the finale, childlike but never childish, this is a beautifully-judged performance of a work which can too easily sound overstated, faux-naif or both.

In a nearly unmatchable seven decades-plus of public exposure as a conductor of more than 150 orchestras that included nearly every major American orchestra, more than 5,000 concert appearances and 300 official recordings, Lorin Maazel can be said to have been one of the most important figures in 20th and early 21st c. music. His recordings of symphonic cycles of composer’s complete orchestral works include those of Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss, for which he won an astonishing ten Grands Prix du Disques. Another composer who figures prominently and importantly in his discography and concert performances is Gustav Mahler, to which this last of three issued sets of symphonies, recorded live with the Philharmonia Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall, concluding a much-lauded symphony cycle, sees release on Signum Classics. “... it’s wonderfully stylish: that hesitant Viennese-style playing-around and a lovely warm string sound ...” (BBC Radio 3) “This second volume, along with the first, is a treasured set on my shelves. I cannot wait for the final volume, Symphonies 7-9.” (ClassicalSource)

Classical Music

Classical Music

As a team, Osmo Vänskä and his Minnesota Orchestra began their collaboration with BIS in 2004, launching a Beethoven symphony cycle that made reviewers worldwide sit up and take notice: "a modern reference edition" was the verdict on web site ClassicsToday.com, while Gramophone Magazine described it as "a Beethoven reforged for today's world". Twelve years later saw the release of the third and final disc in the Minnesota-Vänskä cycle of Sibelius's symphonies, with individual discs receiving distinctions such as a 2014 Grammy Award (for symphonies Nos. 1 and 4), Gramophone's Editor's Choice, Choice of the Month in BBC Music Magazine and inclusion on the annual list of best classical recordings in New York Times.

The present disc launches yet another series, of even more monumental proportions, with Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony, recorded by the orchestra under Osmo Vänskä in Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis in June 2016. Composed in 1902, the purely instrumental work followed upon three symphonies that had all included vocal parts. This and the opening trumpet motif, an allusion to the rhythm that begins Beethoven's Fifth have been interpreted as Mahler's return to a more conventional idea of the symphonic genre. Other features are less traditional, however –a sometimes bewildering mixture of musical idioms reminds us of the melting-pot that Vienna was at the time, with allusions to Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian styles. To an unsuspecting audience, the famous Adagietto for strings and harp –probably the best-known of all of Mahler's music –must also have been surprising, appearing at the heart of a work which is otherwise lavishly scored and orchestrated.

REVIEW:

The orchestral playing is crisp; the conductor, although determined to avoid histrionics, cognizant that emotional extremism is an essential part of Mahler’s idiom even if it need not be indulged. While some might prefer to look elsewhere for the customary Mahlerian blend of anguish, heft, and geniality, there’s more going on here than a thoughtful seating plan and state-of-the-art production.

BIS’s SACD format is certain to wow audiophiles. Even heard through two channels the recording is spacious yet precise and, true to form, the dynamic range is vast, complementing Osmo Vänskä’s partiality for music-making on the threshold of audibility.

– Gramophone

Lorin Maazel leads the Philharmonia Orchestra and a star-studded ensemble of performers in Mahler's first three symphonies. This is the first set in a series that will encompass Mahler's nine symphonies, featuring live orchestral recordings from London's Royal Festival Hall of Maazel and the Philharmonia's much-lauded Mahler cycle.

Left unfinished at the death of the composer, Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony has exerted an enormous fascination on musicologists as well as musicians. Whether fully orchestrated in specific passages, or a sole melody in others, there is one continuous line throughout the surviving manuscript pages and over the years a number of different completions or performing versions have seen the light of day. One of the latest is this 'recreation' of the work for chamber orchestra by composer and conductor Michelle Castelletti. In her liner notes to the recording, Castelletti describes the symphony as 'possibly one of Mahler’s most passionate emotional outbursts and autobiographical creations'. The decision to make an orchestration for chamber forces was inspired by the example of the Viennese Society for Private Musical Performance, established by Arnold Schönberg in 1918 with the goal of performing newly composed music. Among the works performed by the Society were chamber orchestra versions of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Das Lied von der Erde – the latter made by Schoenberg himself – and in her version of Symphony No. 10, Castelletti uses a similar instrumentation. This new completion appears on album for the first time, in a performance by the acclaimed Lapland Chamber Orchestra under John Storgårds, the ensemble’s artistic director since 1996.

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REVIEW:

Having taken Deryck Cooke’s completion as the basis for her edition, Michelle Castelletti slims down the orchestra, not the argument. Meanwhile John Storgårds always cultivates legato, connects notes and episodes, privileges coherence over discontinuity and reminds us that the composer’s sketches preserved at least a single thread of melody running through almost the entire symphony. However you hear the Tenth, you’ll hear it differently after experiencing this one.

– Gramophone