Symphony No 3 Mahler

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.

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).

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.

Fortune dealt Hans Rott a cruel hand. The Austrian composer, born in Vienna in 1858, struggled as a freelance musician and died at the age of twenty-five soon after succumbing to mental illness. Rott’s name lives on thanks to his Symphony No. 1 in E major and receives top billing in a new recording of the work by the Bamberger Symphoniker and its Chief Conductor Jakub Hrůša. They complete their programme with the Symphonic Prelude by Rott’s organ teacher Anton Bruckner and “Blumine” by his friend and fellow Vienna Conservatory student Gustav Mahler.