Search - Mahler, Halban, Walter :: Symphony 4 / Lieder & Gesange

The first and still the best

Laurence Levine | FLUSHING, N.Y. USA | 10/11/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you can get past the 1940s monaural sound (and if you are not already familiar with this performance, you will get a shock. This is the gentlest, most right sounding rendition I have ever heard. The tempi are uncommonly brisk, though they never sound that way. The third movement has never sounded more beautiful. Halban is perfect in the finale. Walter passed away before he could record this work in stereo. His later performances were very different and I'm still not sure whether or not his later slower tempos and even greater expression were an improvement. Did Mahler perform the work this way? I don't know. I only wish I did. I can say that this and Mengleberg's performance have to be heard to be believed. Of the two, Walter's sounds the most convincing, however if the notoriously unreliable Alma can be believed, in this symphony, Mengleberg's reading was (at least in the 1900s if not in 1939) just like Mahler's own. Push comes to shove, if I could own just one Mahler Fourth, this would be it. Lovers of modern sound, must go elsewhere."

Exuberant reading!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 11/02/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Since the late sixties(with the glorious exceptions of Rafael Kubelik and Hans Zender , fortunately) it seems to prevail to play Mahler music as if you were reading Proust 's memories .

So the orchestral executions own energy , precision and virtuosity . Neverheless these ornaments by themselves produce a dangerous combination of mannerism tedious and handsome results , lacking the exquisite flowing , the arresting tonal color , the candor homesickness , the active memory feed and involved for the accurate employement of the light and shadow , so perfectly suggested in the score .

Specially when you decide to perform the Fourth , characterized for brilliant and suggestive melodic lines whose right direction is born from a deep conviction , commitment and knowledge of the meaning of the term : late romanticism . In this sense you may involuntarily draw the performance of beautiness , incisiveness and elegance , but without nuance , dark poetry or even worst the sinister lyricism that demand the score .

Bruno Walter knew impregnate the orchestra of these fundamental elements and won the challenge . He gave the performance the adequate between rage and peace , lyricism and horror , light and shadow , making it breathe and making us participant of that experience .

The main difficult of playing Mahler with success is sumerge in deep waters , where the linearity is precisely absent .

Walter made simply the most idiomatic , powerful and convincing recording of this work.

A real file treasure.

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