Mahler: Symphony No. 3 Mehta. Decca Analogue Productions

The Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä bring us Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony, an extraordinary work by any standards. Scored for extended Wagnerian woodwind and brass sections, posthorn, a large array of percussion, women’s chorus, alto soloist and boys’ choir, the symphony has a duration of over 100 minutes and is filled with extreme emotion, revealing what the composer wanted to say about his own connection with nature and humanity’s place in it: ‘My symphony will be something the world has never heard before! The whole of nature will have a voice in it…’ he wrote about this mammoth work.

Jonathan Nott's exceptional recordings of Gustav Mahler's symphonies are among the most impressive in the hybrid SACD format, and the 2011 release of the Symphony No. 3 in D minor follows suit. This is the longest of Mahler's symphonies, and for many years, recordings of it had been somewhat rare in the marketplace and hit or miss in execution, sometimes succeeding in conveying Mahler's mystical vision, though often succumbing to the difficulties of making such a sprawling work cohere.

David Zinman’s Mahler cycle really hits its stride with this remarkable performance of the Third Symphony. It only has two small drawbacks worth mentioning. First, alto Birgit Remmert sounds pretty good in her big fourth-movement solo, but she’s far less impressive during her brief contributions to the choral fifth movement. Perhaps this take came from another evening (the symphony was recorded during a series of live performances). Second, at the very end of the symphony, despite the very beautiful playing, the trumpets fail to ring out as Mahler’s score directs. Better this glowing sonority than stridency, but there’s no reason why we can’t have the best of both worlds (Haitink’s first recording with the Concertgebouw on Philips never has been surpassed in this respect).

Originally released in 1966, Bernard Haitink's vivid recording of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor is coupled here with a 1973 performance of Das klagende Lied; since these are among the least performed and least familiar works in Mahler's catalog, the pairing is mutually beneficial to each, and listeners who have neither in their collections would do well to consider snapping up this affordable set. Perhaps the only flaw should be mentioned up front: though virtually no tape hiss is audible, there is a bit of an acoustic "vacuum" around the sound of the musicians, suggesting that the analog masters have been cleaned up a bit too efficiently and some resonance seems lost.

This Solti performance is the perfect balance between classical structure and clarity with expressive warmth. … Perhaps I'd rather hear Judith Raskin or Margaret Price singing "Das himmlische Leben, but Kiri Te Kanawa is just fine in the end. … This is truly a great performance from beginning to end.