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Product Details
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| Disc: 1 |
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| 1. Symphony No. 10 in F sharp minor (incomplete): Adagio |
| 2. Symphony No. 10 in F sharp minor (incomplete): Scherzo |
| 3. Symphony No. 10 in F sharp minor (incomplete): Purgatorio |
| 4. Symphony No. 10 in F sharp minor (incomplete): Allegro pesante |
| 5. Symphony No. 10 in F sharp minor (incomplete): Finale |
| Disc: 2 |
| 1. Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor: Trauermarsch, in gemessenem Schritt, streng wie ein Kondukt |
| 2. Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor: Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz |
| 3. Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor: Scherzo, kräftig, nicht zu schnell |
| 4. Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor: Adagietto, sehr langsam |
| 5. Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor: Rondo-Finale, allegro giocoso |
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mahler 5 & 10, Barshai: Can A Russian do Mahler?,
By
This review is from: Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 10 (Barshai reconstruction), & 5 (Audio CD)
Bottom line on this set: Go get it right now before it disappears again from whatever music system you have access to in purchasing it. Now, some discussion points.
First off, if you stop for a minute and think about which world orchestra(s) is(are) your favorite Mahler orchestra(s), you probably will not select a youth symphony for your top tier preferences. But these performances, recorded live from concert performances, can hold their own and then some, even when compared to the likes of Berlin, Vienna, London's Philharmonia, and so forth. No, you will not for a moment think that you are hearing the velvet depth of string sound that pours out from Vienna or Philadelphia, nor will you hear that uniquely blended and brilliant orchestral tone that still marks Berlin (along with considerable stylistic flexibility, as early noted by none other than Peter Tchaikovsky himself). But probably you won't care a whit that the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie is not any of those bands. These young players achieve their own class, glamorous and grand as their own burning commitment to the music. As led by Rudolf Barshai ... whose early claim to fame rested on his early brilliance as a violist, followed by his laurels as founder/director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra ... well the link to Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich is indelible, too .... the JDP just gives and gives and gives. Their instrumental sound is on the bright side, not unusual for a youth orchestra; but not so bright as to lack all tonal depth. They way they play for Barshai in the tenth symphony, you have to admit this Mahler Tenth recording to those exclusive circles of the great Mahler conductors revolving eternally in some starry empyrium. (That's how I regard my fav shelf.) Barshai is not primarily an emotive, stop and go conductor, say in the Bernstein tradition. His conductorial roots seem to be sinking down, into that enduring soil we associate with the likes of Otto Klemperer, Dean Dixon, or even George Szell. His approach to Mahler's Tenth is relentlessly contrapuntal. While the musical lines sing, waltz, stomp, and do all that Mahler asks his music to do, you can still hear the constant, Escher-like logic of Mahler's endlessly transforming counterpoint, in which a theme or motif can assume an incredible number of seemingly disparate lives, yet without losing its way at all, in the end. In Barshai's approach, you understand how Mahler could see himself standing clearly in the traditional heritage of western European music, with old J.S.Bach as the first primer inter pares. The tenth is played in a direct, intense, and entirely straightforward manner. Barshai himself worked through the unfinished sketches over quite a few years, bringing his own particular sense of vision to the completed performing version on offer here. As a performing alternative, it holds its own with the other available versions. It says a lot about Mahler's genius that each redacted version still sounds like genuine Mahler, despite the differences. For Barshai, the famous shrieking chord in the first movement is a great cry, but one that echoes into the near distant future wherein will arise Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Even better than Pierre Boulez, who at times gets so objective in his readings that little or nothing of Mahler's warmth and weltschmerz remain ...(avoid the Boulez/Chicago Ninth Symphony recording at all costs), ... Rudolf Barshai can shape a performance that looks backwards and forwards with equal visionary and prophetic vigor. But wait, there's more. This set also includes a performance, again recorded live from concerts, of the Mahler Fifth Symphony. This recording stirred quite an internet buzz when it was first released. Now, you will again have to search it out, deliberately. (Given the low pricing of Brilliant Classics, you are really getting incredible bang for your small bucks.) So, what about the Mahler Fifth? It is every bit as stunning and marvelous as the Tenth. From the first stuttering trumpet notes of the funeral march theme that opens the fifth symphony, you find yourself utterly convinced. Again, Barshai's emphasis on polyphony pays huge dividends, without slighting the narrative and Romantic dimensions of the drama. Balancing these elements is an act of genius in itself, I cannot help saying. And again, the young players of the JDP are with Barshai every remarkable step of the way. The strings, brass, and woodwinds achieve quite early the gift of expertly balanced inflection, combining rhythmic lift, and insouciance as the rest of the orchestra enters at the start of the first movement. Getting things this right is not easy for anybody. And they keep returning to it, vividly, within the rock-solid frame of the funeral march's steady pace. They leap all fours into the transitional second-movement, as well as into the third-movement Scherzo, without missing a step. Their sturm and drang is genuine to their youthfulness, and remember, this is all being played, live. Soloists in all departments of the JDP are quite exposed in some passages, and there is no approximating this music by adopting large, albeit fuzzy, gestures or haphazard smears from soft to loud. The fact is, Mahler was also a world-class conductor who unceasingly tried to write down what he wanted played. Although his sheer, massed crescendos and dramatic gestures might lead you to think that all you have to do is put your heart on your sleeve and play hard until your fiddle catches fire, the truth is that you have to do that while observing innumerable and quite precise musical markings. Technique challenges you, athletically, at the same time as you play this great music. Well, my allotted thousand words is almost up. The posthorn solos are beautifully played, better than some older adult solists I have heard, indeed. The famous Adagietto goes well, kept flowing. The finale reaches heavenwards just as Mahler wrote it. If you don't already have these symphonies, you can do no better than start with these recordings. If you own other versions, you will still be happy to have these.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning -- A "Must Have" for any Mahler collector,
By John Grabowski (USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 10 (Barshai reconstruction), & 5 (Audio CD)
When thinking of the best orchestras to play Mahler, outfits such as the Concertgebouw, the Vienna and the Berlin Philharmonics come to mind. One would hardly expect a student orchestra, no matter how gifted, to be virtually the equal of these. But the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie under the greatly-underrated Rudolf Barshai, is simply stunning, and have produced what is for me the most all-around satisfying Mahler 5th out there. I admit I haven't even played the 10th Symphony yet, but I wanted to write a review of the 5th because even if the 10th here turns out to be a dud (and all reviews I've read indicate that such is not the case) this would still be a disc for the desert island.
Barshai doesn't overwhelm with the first movement the way many conductors (e.g., Bernstein) do, and the approach is more relaxed and lyrical actually, though there's still plenty of gravity and pomp. The relative lack of weight doesn't undermine the drama, however; au contraire, it helps the overall structure build and gives the first movement a logical flow into the second. (Actually, though, the central part of the first movement *is* plenty furious, while retaining an amazing clarity and focus.) What's most remarkable about this performance is for once it doesn't sound like five terrific but rather disparate movements; there's an overarching presentation here absent in every other M5 I've ever heard. The second movement is where the real passion flows, and with these musicians it brims over. Many other conductors undercut the second movement by pouring too much vehemence into every bar of the first, but Barshai whets our appetites for the second with the first. (If this makes little sense I just suggest you get the disc and listen to it; it's easier to hear than to explain.) The third movement, then, is structurally the centerpiece of the whole work, something it is not with most conductors. (Indeed, it often sounds more like an afterthought.) This is where some of Mahler's most ingenious and persuasive writing resides--if a great interpretor can bring it out. Barshai is a great interpretor, and this is a great Mahler 5th. The contrasting sections are astonishing in their variety and breadth; actually I was so taken with insights I'd never had before that I thought I had previously been guilty of just not paying attention. So I put on some other Mahler 5th third movements to compare; it turns out I got the greater insights because Barshai's is simply the better performance, not because I was listening more closely. That brings us to the famous Adagietto. Here is the only spot where I found I was a *little* conscious of the fact that I was not listening to a top-rank orchestra. It is simply too much to ask the strings here to have the airy persuasiveness and natural breathing of the Vienna Philharmonic, who for me are still unmatched here. However, the fact that we are talking about a student orchestra in *almost* the same breath as the VPO gives some idea just how amazing this recording is. Furthermore, this is not a "live" performance patched together from a half dozen or more separate performances; this was a one-shot Mahler 5th, and while rehearsals were undoubtedly taped as well (all producers tape rehearsals just as backup, in case somebody in row one lets out a loud sneeze during a quiet moment), this is pretty much a single-take effort. Barshai and his young musicians have a monumental achievement here. The finale is the *first* one I've ever heard that is entirely convincing, sounding as though it grows organically from the music before it, with rustic joy and dancing rhythms. (Some conductors can't dance; Boulez can't be rustic or dance. His Mahler 5th, one of the most hyped in recent memory, is so bad it's almost a classical "party record.") Well, maybe this is not quite the first finale that completely clicks: I will have to re-listen to another obscure Mahler 5th I highly regard, that of Michiyoshi Inoue with the Royal Philharmic, also recorded live. I recall also being please with his finale, though not as taken as I am with the current one. The current one also benefits from better playing (technically) and much better sound. Indeed, this is one of the best *sounding* Mahler recordings out there, so even if you're a philistine who puts audio over performance, this is *still* my top recommendation for a Mahler 5th. I could only hope these musicians perform other music by Mahler. I would like to hear them in a 1st, a 6th, a 7th (where I think Barshai could make a lot of sense out of music many other conductors don't seem to grasp), and a 9th. This is one of the best classical CDs to come along in a decade and deserves to be at the top of the sales charts; yet because conductor, orchestra and label are unknown, it will quickly disappear. That would be a pity, because it's exactly intelligent, high-quality recording projects like this that are needed to inject new life into classical music. Buy it, buy it, buy it!
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great 5th and a very interesting 10th,
By
This review is from: Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 10 (Barshai reconstruction), & 5 (Audio CD)
This bargain twofer contains two excellent recordings that must be included in any serious Mahler CD collection. Rudolf Barshai is conducting Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, an ambitious orchestra that gives its very best under the conductor's baton.
First we have an excellent interpretation and live performance of the fifth symphony, well recorded. The disc is worth buying just for the excellent take of the adagietto, below 9 minutes in duration - at love song pace and not at funeral pace, so to speak, which is interpretatively correct. (Mahler wrote the piece as a love song but some conductors, Bernstein for instance, have wrongly presented it as a funeral piece.) But all the movements are equally well presented, with perfect clarity and balance. So this is indeed one of the best recordings of the fifth that we have. To my mind, only Bruno Walter's mono recording on CBS/Sony and Kiril Kondrashins USSR take on Audiophile Classics are better choices for the collection. But Barshai's interpretation is far better recorded. Secondly we have an interesting and moving interpretation AND version of the unfinished tenth symphony - Barshai's own. Thus it is not Cooke's familiar version we have here, as in Simon Rattle's fine Berlin recording. Many times Barshai has made choices somewhat different from Cooke's. But there are not many great surprises. Barshai's version sounds a bit more extravagant than Cooke's austere version, however. Playing is excellent throughout, though not as outstanding as in the fifth. The engineering provides a clear and detailed recording. Strongly recommended.
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