Mahler: Symphony No. 10 ~ Harding [Import]

Gustav Mahler (Composer), Daniel Harding (Conductor), Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
• Conductor: Daniel Harding
• Composer: Gustav Mahler
• Audio CD (April 30, 2008)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Dg Imports
• ASIN: B0014G5LG2
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,978 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A potentially major conductor comes into his own, September 4, 2008

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Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 10 ~ Harding (Audio CD)

Here for his debut on DG Daniel Harding competes on Simon Rattle's home ground. Rattle, too, was a rising star while quite young and made one of his early successes with the Mahler Tenth, a work he as gone on to conduct more than a hundred times, amazingly. Harding, however, was the first to introduce the whole work to the Vienna Phil, in 2004. Both conductors use the revised Deryck Cooke performing edition (the only one to gain wide acceptance in the concert hall), and both meet the challenge of making the Tenth sound like real, fleshed-out Mahler rather than a collection of sketches surroudning two completed movements. I'd say that Harding goes as far as Rattle in giving us a moving performance with every ounce of Mahler's complex tonal and emotional world, and in the bargain he is more freely expressive and involving.

Harding's intent to pull us in is evident from the first bars of the great Adagio, which he molds the way a gifted Chopin pianist molds a nocturne. Literalists will want to stay at home, needless to say, once they realize how flexible the tempo and phrasing are going to be. Harding doesn't press the line as fervently as Bernstein, and he's not as coolly technical as Abbado, Chailly, or Rattle in his second recording from Berlin. Harding's approach is almost purely emotive, aiming to wrap us in a spell that will hold through the rougher, skimpier patches to come.

The Vienna Philharmonic is the perfect ensemble for him, given its effortless expressivity, although DG's slightly tubby, resonant recording could be cleaner. Another notable thing about Harding's style is its soft grain; he eschews sudden explosions and eruptions, preferrring a seamless line a la Karajan (a name I'm invoking in a positive sense). The overall effect is eloquent rather than searingly tragic -- a justifibale course, if an unusual one. An immediate payoff is that the Scherzo isn't a letdown coming after the Adagio, and Harding further amplifies it as full-blooded Mahler with a great deal of variety in the playing; it feels not at all like a scketch.

Purgatorio, an enigmatic movement but fully completed by Mahler, isn't as biting or stark in Harding's hands as in Rattle's, and again the lively, full-bodied playing of the Vienna Phil. holds your attention in every bar. Harding's romantic surges are a personal touch that I feel add a new dimension to the climax. (Sticklers will accuse him of taffy-puling.) The second Scherzo gains in power, and by this time the listener realizes that Harding is trying to draw a single arc through the symphony, building to a catharsis in the finale. That's why he soft-pedaled the opening Adagio and gives this later Scherzo such force.

Here as elsewhere there's great attention to variety of tone and changing mood. I can't say that anyone has done that part of the Tenth better, even the virtuosic Chailly on Decca. The vexed drumbeats msut be noticed, I guess, even though they are no more than one detail in a massive score. I find hard thwacks jarring and take my cue from alma Mahler's anecdote that her husband was inspired by the muffled drums of a funeral procession heard down below their window in New York. Harding agrees and gtives us distant, powerful, but muffled thuds. For once, the transition between mvt. 4 and 5 isn't nerve-racking.

And so, does Harding succeed in making the finale, one of the barest movements, emotionally convincing in its starkness? I think so, because he expresses a postmortum elegy, haunating and removed -- a great composer is recasting the thrall of music after he's left this world. Compared to Rattle's, this account is warmer and less skeletal. I found myself listening with a catch in my throat.

In sum, the most outstanding Tenth since Rattle's and one of the best Mahler recordings in a long time.

P.S. 2011 - Since making this recording Harding seems to have been wandering in the wilderness for a while. After hearing a series of fairly uninspired concerts, I hope he finds a way to fulfill so much early promise.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Long breathed, flowing and intense ..., May 2, 2009

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Pater Ecstaticus (Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 10 ~ Harding (Audio CD)

Mahler 10 is one of my favorite symphonies, not just because it is 'beautiful music', but especially because it is so very different from anything Mahler ever created, I think. First of all I am drawn to this symphony (can one really 'love' this music?) because of the weird and wonderful, sometimes horrific, soundworld it inhibits - with its nervous unease but also desperate longing - and the dangerous flirtings with atonality and its bone chilling emotional implications: with Mahler, the atonal episodes (often forte or fortissimo) in his music surely stand for (sometimes utter) fear and despair ... Yes, this is music about loss and fear of death, but also it is music about the deepest possible passion for life and love!

If I may be allowed to compare this recording with one of my favorite recordings of this symphony, namely the one by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) under Sir Simon Rattle. This performance by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (VPO) under Daniel Harding is long breathed and flowing (at about the same playing times for all movements, compared to Rattle). The playing in the recording with the BPO under Rattle is more sharply accentuated, which has an emotonally jarring effect (which is indeed very appropriate, IMHO). The climaxes on this VPO recording are more gradually built up but at the same time powerful. The whole recording is characterized by a deep sense of coherence and 'flow' - a 'warmer', more enveloping sound too (an objective statement, because the somewhat more 'jittery' playing and the more directly recorded instruments - accentuating their individual timbres - on the BPO/Rattle recording is an utter success, to my ears). While Daniel Harding paints the aural canvas with a grand chiaroscuro tableau, Simon Rattle could be said to more accentuate the jarringly modernist or expressionist aspects of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
Luckily, like Rattle, Daniel Harding uses only one stroke on the muffled bass drum to end movement IV, from which the uneasy, grimm beginnings of the Finale can start off without further ado. And luckily, the drum-stroke is not fortissimo for 'dramatic effect', but forte (or is it piano?), so as not to contast too much with the dull and dark beginnings of the Finale. We don't have to overstate the case here: we are in a certain 'death' mood at the very beginning already, so we don't have to hammer it down with the bass drum too, I think. From this 'death' mood, the music slowly climbs out of the horror, while along the way reliving all the experiences we have come across earlier in the course of the symphony, the music of longing and love gaining the upper hand and ending the symphony not just in a sigh of longing but in a final shout of love to the world (and Alma) ...
Some reviewers have stated that this performance, with its flowing legato playing, gives it an extra sense of coherency that belies the sketchy origin of the notes. But I myself believe that both recordings - by Harding as well as Rattle - are convincing creations of this music. My personal favorite remains the BPO/Rattle, but this recording is a masterful and eloquent addition to the ever growing Mahler 10 discography. If you love Mahler's Tenth Symphony, then you should at least sample this recording. Highly recommended.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not my very favorite, but still very, very good, November 14, 2008

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B. Guerrero "Mahler nutcase" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 10 ~ Harding (Audio CD)

OK, other reviewers have gone on and on about the Vienna factor. What I think is remarkable, is how UNLIKE this sounds like the day-to-day VPO in Mahler. Their response is far sharper; more rhythmic; more fleet than usual - particularly in the middle three movements. Compare this to the marmoreal sounding Maazel performances - not to mention the Abbado/VPO M9/M10 Adagio - and you'll hear a world of difference! Another big difference is in the sound quality.

Most recordings made in Vienna's shoe-box shaped Musikverein, have come from live sources. This must be a studio recording. This is the first recording of a major work played by the VPO that can begin to approach the sonic results that they regularly used to get, "back in the day", at the old Sofiensaal (eventually burnt down). Sonically speaking, this is far better than what you hear on either the Kaplan or Boulez Mahler "Resurrection" recordings, for example. Point is, the sound is excellent.

Here's another "Vienna factor": the 10th - especially in the Cooke edition - has always sounded a bit too thin, or too "nude" in the bass. The Musikverein, on the other hand, has always been generous to the lower end of the audio spectrum, and the Viennese double basses and celli are among the best anywhere. As a result, and as mentioned previously, the Vienna Phil. make the Cooke version (Goldschmidt, really) sound more filled out; more natural; more complete.

All this said, there are performances I like better for tempo relationships. The two outer movements aren't nearly so slack sounding on the recent Noseda/BBC Phil. M10 (Chandos), while their "Purgatorio" (middle movement) doesn't sound quite so rushed either. Still, the Viennese strings can sustain excess slack in the outer movements better than most. Personally, I prefer that the first movement go much quicker when doing the entire 10th (as opposed to playing the Adagio by itself). Harding stretches the first movement well beyond 25 minutes, while Ormandy is 15 seconds shy of 22 minutes. But it's hard to argue with the results the Vienna strings get in the last movement, even if I prefer a less gossamer approach to Mahler's final reach back towards young, idealistic love (let's call it a "reach", and not just a glance).

Kudos on three other important points as well:

First, like Rattle, Harding links the last movements with just a single drum stroke, not two.

Second, also like Rattle, Harding takes everything from the second scherzo's (4th movement) final expressionistic outburst, to the beginning of the fifth movement, quite slowly. This lends a very Shostakovich like atmosphere to the final two minutes of the fourth movement.

Third, and not least, Harding doesn't blow you out of the room with his solo bass drum shots; the "muted" drum sensibly played on a bass drum (pleeeeaze, no more tenor drums, tom-toms, bongos, etc.). Combined with an excellent solo tuba, as well as sound quality that can pick up all the soft tam-tam strokes, you'd be very hard pressed to find a more effective or atmospheric sounding start to the finale. That alone counts for plenty.