Mahler Symphony no 1 London

The LPO Live label already boasts one Eighth – Tennstedt, live in the same venue in 1991 – worthy of a place at the summit of the Eighth’s discography. Now it has a second.

When Gustav Mahler began his First Symphony in 1884, ‘modern music’ meant Wagner, while the standard by which new symphonies were judged was that of Brahms, the arch ‘classical-romantic’. In a Brahmsian symphony there was little room for Wagnerian lush harmonies, or sensational new orchestral colours. In fact the orchestral forces Brahms employed were basically the same as those used by Beethoven and Schubert in their symphonies, three-quarters of a century earlier.

Few conductors turn in tightly controlled and coherent renditions of Gustav Mahler's sprawling Symphony No. 7 in E minor, "Song of the Night," and it often comes across either as a jumble of ironic distortions or as a strange riddle that needs to be deciphered.
It would hardly seem as direct and powerful as its predecessor, the Symphony No. 6 in A minor, "Tragic," which most conductors take at face value and Few conductors turn in tightly controlled and coherent renditions of Gustav Mahler's sprawling Symphony No. 7 in E minor, "Song of the Night," and it often comes across either as a jumble of ironic distortions or as a strange riddle that needs to be deciphered.

No worldly commotion is heard in Heaven! All live in gentlest peace'. Such is the child-like innocence which permeates Mahler's Fourth Symphony, and yet beneath the surface there is more than meets the eye: an undercurrent of mysticism; a momentary glimpse behind the curtain at something timeless and unsettling. Star Russian soprano Sofia Fomina joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski in this performance of Mahler's beguiling Symphony, recorded live at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall.

It seems that Gary Bertini, like Gustav Mahler, is destined to be better remembered after his death than he was known during his life. When he passed away in 2005, he was little known outside Israel, Japan and continental Europe and nowhere near as widely recognised as the glamour conductors who appear on the пїЅmajorпїЅ labels. His recordings were few and hard to find. A year after his passing, Capriccio has launched a Gary Bertini Edition (see, for example, review) featuring live recordings drawn from the archives of the KпїЅlner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, and EMI has re-released his Mahler cycle.

The first releases from the Munich Philharmonic’s own recording label feature sensational performances of works by two composers with whom the orchestra is closely associated: Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4.
The recording of Mahler’s Second Symphony was made during the opening concerts of Valery Gergiev’s first season as Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic. Since first coming to prominence after winning the Karajan Conducting Competition at the age of 24, Gergiev has established himself as one of the world’s great conductors and communicators on the value and role of music in today’s society.

Valery Gergiev's commitment to late Romantic music has yielded impressive recordings of orchestral works by Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, and especially Gustav Mahler, whose symphonies received an impressive audiophile cycle from Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra on the LSO Live label. Gergiev appears to have embarked on yet another Mahler series, this time with the Munich Philharmonic, starting in 2016 with a stirring account of the Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection," and followed by this 2017 release of the Symphony No. 4 in G major.

The Seventh remains the least well-known of all Mahler's symphonies. Precisely because its material is so enormously wide-ranging, its colors so thrillingly kaleidoscopic, this work is also perhaps the one from all the composer's canon most reliant on a knowing, strong-willed interpretive presence. This Michael Tilson Thomas provides in spades in one of his finest performances on disc.