SYMPHONY – Gustav Mahler

On Sunday 18^th at 4pm, the day on which Gustav Mahler died in 1911, his SYMPHONY No. 8 (1h20mins).

Erika Sunnegårdh — Soprano, Ricarda Merbeth — Soprano, Christiane Oelze — Soprano, Lioba Braun — Alto, Gerhild Romberger — Alto, Stephen Gould — Tenor,  Dietrich Henschel — Baritone, Georg Zeppenfeld — Bass.  MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig, Thomanerchor, GewandhausChor, GewandhausKinderchor, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Riccardo Chailly — Conductor.

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s death, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and their musical director Riccardo Chailly, acclaimed all over the world, closed the centennial festival with Mahler’s monumental Symphony No. 8, the Symphony of a Thousand.

To perform Mahler’s brilliant Symphony No. 8, which requires one of the largest orchestras of any work in the symphonic repertoire, Maestro Chailly conducted 500 musicians and singers. This 80-minute symphony, composed in 1906, is one of the longest of Mahler’s symphonies.  It marks a break with the composer’s purely orchestral writing.

“I have just completed my Eighth. It is the greatest I have composed thus far. It is so unique in content and form that it does not lend itself to description. Imagine that the universe begins to sound and ring out. These no longer are human voices, rather planets and suns that are circling.” —Gustav Mahler, August 1906

The last of Mahler’s works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.

“The instant the credits appear on screen it is clear that both sound and picture quality on this blu ray are going to be state of the art. The production team at Accentus {largely responsible for the acclaimed Abbado/Lucerne Mahler cycle) seem to have perfected the art of recording these works. If there are problems, they are likely to arise from your reaction to the symphony itself, and, to some extent, Chailly’s interpretation.

The playing of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is uniformly excellent, and the soloists are all beyond reproach, rarely the case in recordings of this symphony. It seems invidious to single out any of them for special praise but the the two main sopranos, Erika Sunnegardh and Ricarda Merbeth in particular, are stunning. The important tenor part is beautifully sung by Stephen Gould, though in one or two places he has to strain a little to reach the high notes. The choirs too are excellent, producing a veil of sound, audibly {and realistically) placed behind the orchestra.

But here we come to the first problem: Mahler’s contrapuntal writing in the first movement is so dense at times that the resulting sound lacks the sharpness we may be accustomed to in other works. Having listened to other recordings and in concert, I have however had to conclude that this is actually what it does sound like. I do not think even the Accentus sound engineers could make these passages sound clearer. Overall, however, the orchestral and choral sounds are clearly and crisply caught, with individual thematic threads coming over with remarkable clarity. The climactic finale of the first movement is thrillingly caught as is the finale of the symphony. I have never “felt” the percussion cut through the orchestral texture so clearly before.

To sum up, this is probably the best Mahler 8 currently available” Amazon.com reviewer