Customer Reviews

Mahler Discography

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This book was published in 1995 by the Kaplan Foundation (I have no idea why the publisher is here listed as Dutton. The ISBN-10 number is indeed the same as on my copy) and it is THE ultimate Mahler discography up to September 30, 1994. It has been of constant use to me whenever I am in a Mahler listening spree - as right now, with the 9th Symphony. To give an idea of its achievements (I am quoting here the introductory essay by Zoltan Roman), the previous, most comprehensive discography, published by Jerome F. Weber in 1974 (it was the second, revised and enlarged edition) contained 342 entries. Fülöp's has 1,168. Mahler's most recorded symphony, the first, had 34 entries in Weber, 106 with Fülöp.

The discography is clearly organized, by compositions (starting with the symphonies, then the song cycles, the piano quartet movement, the dubious Symphonic Prelude and then the recordings of Mahler's re-orchestrations of other composers) and provides a wealth of information: recording dates and locations (in some cases where I was able to double check with later discographies of orchestras or conductors, the dates are not always entirely accurate, though), labels and numbers, dates of release(s) and deletion(s), reviews in the major English-speaking record magazines, authors of liner notes and much more. The recordings are listed by dates of recording, but indexes of artists and performing ensembles, and of labels, allows for other research criteria. There is also a table of timings (organized by works, then alphabetical order of conductors or singers). All this is phenomenal.

Naturally, more than 15 years after the book's publication, much discographic water has flown under the bridge, and it is now frustrating to have such an information gap. It is not so much the absence of all the new recordings made and published as of 1995 that is my personal problem (I can track those through searches of the Fanfare and Gramophone on-line archive, or on the present website), as of the recently published older recordings, live or else. For instance, concernning the 9th symphony, Fülöp lists a recording made by Kiril Kondrashin with the Moscow Philharmonic in May '67, released by Melodiya and Eurodisc on LP but not reissued on CD when Fülöp completed his discography. Now, I have the Melodiya CD of Kondrashin's 9th, Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 9 in D Major, but there the product info gives 1964 as the recording date. Is this the same as the one listed by Fülöp? But the Japanese label Altus also published a live recording by Kondrashin and the same orchestra, made in Tokyo on May 16th, 1967 (ALT-018, not listed on this website apparently; it was reviewed by Tony Duggan on Musicweb International in July 2002). So is THIS the version that was published back in the LP era? I don't know. Same with Horenstein's live performances with the London Symphony orchestra, first published by Music & Arts (Symphony No.9 Box Set Import or Symphony 9). When Fülöp published his discography, he simply reproduced the scanty info given by Music & Arts: 1966. In 2002 BBC Legends published another Horenstein 9th with the LSO, Mahler: Symphony No. 9, live from Sept. 15, 1966. I've read sources claiming that they are not the same performances and, from information gathered on the net, Mahler afficionados believe the Music & Arts version to be from a concert given on April 17 at the Royal Albert Hall. But this is contradicted by Philip Stuart's authoritative discograpny of the London Symphony Orchestra, which claims that these are the same, Sept. 15 performances. Wonder what does Fülöp now have to say about that.

Untill recently, one could find the answer by going to his mail-order website, Mikrokosmos, which hosted his Mahler discography. I should have copied and pasted it. Now, Fülöp has published a paper version of the up-to-date discography, for sale, and consequently deleted the online discography. Not that I blame him: it is tremendous work and deserves to be remunerated (other than having all the Mahler lovers raise funds to subsidise the erection of a statue in Fülöp's honor). But while the original discography cost 50, the new one is 90 (and that's good news: it was initially sold for 180). Now that's an investment, and means that the purchase of some 10 Mahler recordings will be the compensating casualty. Oh, heck, I think I'm going to sacrifice a few Mahler recordings, just to have clear, precise, thorough and up-do-date info about thousands of Mahler recordings that I'll now want to purchase.

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And a post-script from Dec. 3: It's there! Just got it. Wow! It's mammoth, humongous. 8.5 wide, 11.8 long, 1.6 thick (21.5 x 30 x 4 cm). They say it weighs 4.5 pounds (2kg), but it sure feels like more, and I don't have a scale to check. I can't review it per se as it is not yet listed on this website (ISBN 978-963-06-9566-4). The book is lavish and now comes with color reproductions of the covers of some of the early recordings, on 78rmps and LP (and even on CD when the release was a belated one, as with Scherchen's live recording of the 7th, which pretaded Rosbaud first studio recording but was released first by AS Disc in 1990 - and the photo is of Orfeo's later and "official" release of two years later). It lists a phenomenal 2774 recordings, and has added Laser Disks and DVDs. Entries for the 1st symphony now amount to 271. The number of recordings of arrangements and reorchestrations by Mahler has jumped from 30 to 80. The author of the preface, Zoltan Roman, also points to the enormous increase of recordings of arrangements of compositions of Mahler. I already had the 5th Symphony played on the organ (Mahler: Symphony 5 (tr. organ by David Briggs) [FIRST RECORDING]), or the Adagietto in the beautiful arrangement for a cappella chorus sung by Accentus under Laurence Equilbey (Accentus: Transcriptions), but I must ABSOLUTELY find the complete symphony arranged for flute and dance orchestra, or its first movement only arranged for Klezmer band, and I'd also be very curious to hear Monserrat Caballe singing the Adagietto on lyrics after Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

What the new edition does NOT do, though, is to list the downloads only - for instance the complete cycle available from the New York Philharmonic and recorded live by Maazel between 2003 and 2009, or the Boston 6th under Levine from October 2008. So in a way, given the evolution of the "modes of consumption" of recorded music, the discography is already outdated. You see that Fülöp is a man raised in the era of "real" media (as opposed to "virtual"), when music was engraved upon and contained in physical objects that you could store on shelves. Speaking of which: the book comes with an inserted sheet of paper, in which Fülöp issues a call "seeking an organization" capable of maintaining and providing financial resources for the further development of his Mahler archive of "approximately 1000 LPs, 3000 CDs & CDRs, 150 DVDs and Laser Discs and 250 78rpm records" (staggeringly, the collection "lacks only 7 recordings known to exist"; "most of the recordings are represented by their first editions, and many of the early performances are represented in several formats, such as 78rmp, LP and CD"). Reading this, my first thought was: where else than in Vienna? Vienna let Mahler go in 1908 and sorely regretted it afterwards (not everybody of course); wouldn't it be time, over a century later, to get him back?

Back to the discography: jumping to the different sections (listing by performers, labels and table of timings) has been made easier thanks to a color marking on the edges of the pages - but, for the next reissue, Fülop must consider the same kind of color marking for individual symphonies and Lied cycles. As it stands, you need to flip through the pages to find the end of the previous symphony and the start of the next one, and it is made even less wieldy with the song cycles, because unlike the symphonies the ordering is not numerical, and the logic is not apparent, neither alphabetical nor chronological (Das Lied, Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Rückert-Lieder, Klagende Lied, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder, Three songs for voice and piano). There is a detailed Table of Contents, but it would be more practical not to have to go back and forth.

I notice that one of the features that I am now using most, whenever I am on a Mahler listening spree (as right now) is Fülöp's table of timings. It is not always entirely accurate (some of the timings he obviously took from the LP version, and they show a few seconds' discrepancy with those of the CD reissue, and I even spotted a blunt mistake, in the timings of the first two movements from Abbado's Chicago 5th), but I find it great fun to locate the fastest and slowest versions EVER recorded of such and such symphony, overall and in each movement (and Fülöp signals those in bold type). It's not just trivia: it shows what extremes of music Mahler's notes can yield, and getting a complete view of the music requires, in my opinion, listening not only to the "middle-of-the-road" versions but also to its extremes. Like, instant quizz: who recorded the slowest ever and the fastest ever Adagietto from the 5th?

An INVALUABLE bonus is also the inclusion of the reissue of one of the rarest Mahler recordings ever. It is the 4th Symphony performed by Paul Van Kempen conducting the Hilversum Radio Orchestra in 1949. For many years Fülöp wasn't even sure that this 78 rmp had even actually been released, because he could find no one who had ever seen or heard it; when he was finally able to ascertain that it had indeed been published, he wasn't able to find it, until he located a copy held in a Dutch radio library. He was only able to obtain a non-professional transfer of the 11 sides onto CDR made by the library personnel, and it is that copy that has been restored and is published here. The side joints are jarring, there is surface noise, the sound is somewhat muffled and/or distant and some sides are worse than others - but sufficient orchestral details come out and, although soprano Corry Bijster doesn't have the youthfully radiant timbre required, Van Kempen conducts a performance that is both firm and full of character. The "jump" to the final explosion of the third movement is the most strangely phrased I've ever heard, with the second note articulated as a very short staccato.

So, Mahlerites, at the new price, this is a steal, and worth every penny. It is not listed (yet?) on this website and must be ordered directly from Fülöp's website, at MahlerRecords dot com.

Oh, and my discographic riddles are now solved: re: Horenstein, Fülöp maintains that they are two different recordings. I see that, on other points where there were small discrepancies between Fülöp's previous Mahler discography and Philip Stuart's discography of the LSO, Fülöp has amended his own, so he must have had reasons not to follow Stuart on this point. Well, I am going to have to buy the BBC release and compare the two to make absolutely sure. And Fülöp has re-dated the Kondrashin Melodiya LP to 1964. Fülöp's recording and release dates can't be considered always entirely trustworthy, though. One example is with Scherchen's "official" recordings of Symphonies # 5 and 7 for Westminster. In the new edition, Fülöp has added the recording date of July 53 (the previous edition just stated "1953"). This is indeed the date provided by Scherchen's daughter Myriam, the owner of the label Tahra, which has just reissued Scherchen's Westminster recordings (Mahler: Symphonies Nos.1, 5 & 7, so recent in fact that it is not listed in Fülöp), and as I inquired with her on this Mrs Scherchen indeed confirmed that these dates were inscribed in Scherchen's diaries. But Fülöp STILL gives (as in the earlier edition, which had prompted my enquiry with Tahra) 12-52 and 5-53 as release dates for these original Westminster LPs: NOT COMPATIBLE!

Fastest Adagietto: Mengelberg: Wagner; R. Strauss; Mahler on Naxos, at 7+ minutes.

Slowest Adagietto: Symphony 5 Scherchen Philadelphia live October 1964 on Tahra, at 15+ minutes. See my review.

The closing date of the discography is April 7, 2010, "exactly 3 months before Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday" - wonder why Fülöp didn't wait three more months, it would have been so perfect.

At 4.5 pounds and number of entries more than doubled in 15 years, this is not going to be possible any more for the next, augmented edition in 15 years' time.