Search - Gustav Mahler, Pierre Boulez, Anne Sofie von Otter :: Mahler: Symphony No. 3

Over-powering

D. Schultz | United States | 12/05/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In a word - astonishing. Mahler's massive symphony, in which he tries to 'construct the world,' is conducted by Boulez and played by the VPO with all the pomp and expanse Mahler envisioned as he wrote it. The recording, of course DG, is superb. I have listened to all recordings of this symphony and this is the best by far (Abbado's latest comes in a close second though). You'd never know Boulez was the "arch Modernist" listening to this recording; Boulez rips and pulls you out of the wet and muddy Spring soil like a flower among rocks and thorns - one almost levitates as he listens (if one listens closely) - the music just lifts you with its booming echoes and reverbs. This is a great CD every Mahler fanatic (and what follower of Mahler is not a fanatic? He's one of those personalities...) must have and listen to with the intensity that the Master used in composing it.enjoy"

"See-through" Mahler from Boulez

J. F. Laurson | Washington, DC United States | 01/08/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"
When it comes to Mahler, I will admit that I don't understand all of his symphonies (if any) - and the third (together with the 7th) can still be elusive to my mind. Perhaps it is because of this inability that I find Pierre Boulez's version so compelling. His "see-through" Mahler lifts the rug a little and lets you peek. Because of superior transparency, the structures come out more clearly than with any other conductor I have heard - and the less I understand a work, the more I tend to like his interpretation. That the Vienna Philharmonic and Anne Sofie von Otter worked with him on that recording can't hurt. In fact, her voice is clear as a mountain brook, seductive and well controlled. (No excesive hissing when she sings - pianissimo - "Menssssschhhh".) The sound, especially in the SACD version (costing the same - and, being a hybrid, making the Red-book-standard-only-CD version rather pointless) is every bit as good as in Riccardo Chailly's even more recent and highly appraised third. Both count perfection in playing and sound on their plus side, and both could be accused of giving the emotional side short shrift. Disagreeing with almost every reviewer (save for the American Record Guide's in-house Mahler specialist), I don't quite know what makes Chailly's interpretation so special. It impressed me, but it also left me cold without telling me anything new about the work. In contrast, I don't find Boulez rushed - but haunting and subversive, instead. Ask ten Mahler-lovers for their favorite interpretation of any symphony and you get ten different opinions. This is mine.



(4 1/2 stars)



P.S. The regular CD has a nasty, if very brief, editing error in the third movement... a mistake that was thankfully corrected on the SACD."

A Mahler third to reckon with.

Plaza Marcelino | Caracas Venezuela | 11/26/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I settle for 4 stars because this disc may easily be rated higher or lower depending on your disposition towards Marler's music. I myself enjoyed it enormously, but if your concept of Mahler's music is that these scores are about excess, sentiment, heart-on-sleeve utterances you may wisely skip this version for most likely you won't like it at all. Boulez's world is about exposing this music for what it's really worth, it's about analysing the structure that lies behind the printed page, it's about presenting the listener in clarity and precision the complex web of orchestral voices, subjects and countersubjects Mahler wrote in the score, a task in which he is greatly helped by a recording of spectacular proportions, not because it will overwhelm you with irreal sonics that will melt your stereo system but rather because the DG engineers have obtained a product of utmost transparency and immediacy that fits Boulez's conception like a glove. The Vienna Philharmonic play magnificently for Boulez and conform to his directions and ear for clarity of intonation with great precision, as does von Otter in her 4th and 5th movement lied and episode with the Vienna Boy's Choir, where she avoids the sentimentality that has so often characterised other singers no less well known. The performance brought to my mind another great recording that shared a lot with this new Boulez effort, Jascha Horenstein's LSO recording made shortly before his death for Unicorn and that still holds its own, both musically and sonically.



So, when facing this recording think your Mahler well. Followers of the no-holds-barred tendency will do better by searching the NYPO Bernstein recording made in the early 1960's for CBS; besides Bernstein's characteristic theatricality and free feeling of expression, it has an emotion of the new that makes it very special (if you like that kind of Mahler). Lovers of the score will keep Lenny's CBS disc as essential and place it besides this one, essential listening too, for they complement the other, two sides of the same coin. A safe, "middle" approach may be in the lyrical readings from either Rafael Kubelik, also from the now remote sixties (and at a very accesible price at that!) or Claudio Abbado, a 1980 recording also made for DG and with the VPO as well plus Jessye Norman, no less, taking care of the solo vocals and in early-digital but still very fine sonics; I'd avoid Abbado's newer BPO reading made last decade at a RFH concert, not because of it being musically "wrong" or faulty (far from that) but because of its flat sound that does no justice to this fascinating work."