Mahler: Symphony No. 3 [Live]

Anna Larsson (Artist), Gustav Mahler (Composer), Claudio Abbado (Conductor), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
• Conductor: Claudio Abbado
• Composer: Gustav Mahler
• Audio CD (June 11, 2002)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Live
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B000063TAJ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #139,952 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As raw as it should be!, June 16, 2003

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LJM (Earth) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (Audio CD)

This is indeed a very powerful interpretation of Mahler's third symphony. Thus, I do not agree with the reservations that some of the other reviewers have. If compared with Abbado's earlier recording, made some twenty years ago, this is the one to buy. That earlier version is a very harmless mainstream interpretation, and Jessye Norman is certainly not the ideal soloist (too operatic, to say the least). From that earlier interpretation, you do not really get the idea of how revolutionary this work still is.

In this latter one, by contrast, Abbado has a complete grasp of the work as a whole, and Anna Larsson has the perfect dark voice for the fourth and fifth movements. The climaxes are very powerfully presented; they are raw, breathtaking, and captured by the recording with a tremendous presence. But the music is always stunningly well played by the BPO. Finally, add the sense of an occasion you get from a live performance and this is nothing but a very memorable disc.

Moreover, a very important detail that Abbado observes is the solo oboe glissandi in the fourth movement that Mahler marked as "hinaufziehen (Wie ein Naturlaut)". Most conductors ignore this instruction, but on this CD it comes off very well (compare with Rattle's interpretation, and Gielen's).

In short: if you want to get a recording of this work which presents Mahler's third symphony as raw and revolutionary as it should be (and once was), this is a disc to consider.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let's clear the air of idiocy, September 29, 2005

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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. 3 (Audio CD)

There's no arguing over taste, but it's frustrating when reviewers totally misrepresent the facts. Contrary to the one-star review above, Abbado's live Mahler Third is in excellent sound, there is no artificial reverb added by DG engineers, no maskiing of detail; the orchestra is far from sounding bored, and the conductor is in top form. This reading is a major addiiton to the current catalog, although I wouldn't want to be without Abbado's previous Third from 1982 with the Vienna Phil., one of the highlights of his studio cycle. It's quite unprecedented for Europe's two premiere orchestras to record such a massive work with the same conductor, but Abbado enjoys total mastery in this score.

Now that we've got all that straight, I can only add to the chorus of praise for this astonishing recording. Abbado had become a great condcutor by the time he retired from the Berlin Phil. in 2002, and although the CD catalog is full of outstanding Mahler Thirds, there is some claim to be made that this one exceeds every predecessor in orchestral virtuosity, depth of interpretation, and sheer excitement. It belongs in the Mahler pantheon along with Abbado's incomparable CD of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Sym. 6, 7, and 9, all with the magnificent Berlin PHil.

Sometimes I can shrug off bad reviews of good performances, but it's maddening when a great artist is giving his all and a listener sneers. Five stars without reservation.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SUMMER IS ICUMIN IN, August 27, 2008

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DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (Audio CD)

This live performance dates from 1999 and preserves for us a visit of the Berlin Phil under Abbado to London. They did not bring their own chorus with them, and the choirs taking part are the LSO Chorus and the CBSO Youth Chorus. The contralto soloist in the 4th and 5th movements is Anna Larsson, and we are also told the names of the violinist and posthorn player who are given certain prominent parts. The first disc is given over to the multi-part first movement only, with the remaining hour or so of music on the second. Division into tracks is sensibly aligned with the rehearsal-breaks in the composer's score, and there is a final track consisting of applause lasting three minutes and 20 seconds. Mahler himself was at pains to stress the non-traditional elements that the score incorporates, and it occurred to me to wonder whether he thought of extending this spirit of inclusiveness to take in audience clapping as an integral part of the composition.

I would call the performance excellent without reservation. The great and unique Mahler sound is presented in all its splendour by the orchestra. The two choruses perform admirably in the very different roles assigned to them, and Anna Larsson is completely superb, beautiful in tone and soulful in expression. Tempi throughout are broad and unhurried, which is how I like them, and the great exalted conclusion is magnificent, well deserving the rapturous reception it got from the London audience. The recording suits me very well too, but you will certainly have to use a high volume-setting or some of the distant pianissimo effects will be verging on inaudible. This gives me no problems in a sitting-room of very average size while my neighbours are out. There is no trace of strain or distortion in the loudest sequences, and the drum reverberating through the floor thrilled me absolutely. Above all, this account captures for me the true tone and expression of Mahler as I imagine it, part transfigured, part anxious and even neurotic. This symphony is one of the most lyrical in the Mahler series, and Abbado has been rightly and successfully concerned to convey the sheer beauty of this score as well as intense personal expression that any of Mahler's music majors in.

Very properly where Mahler is concerned, there is a thoughtful liner note that tries to interpret the composer's own voluble comments on the `meaning' (if that is the right word) of the music. The eight sections of the first movement carry Mahler's own captions, some sort of image of summer `marching in' followed by what various agencies - flowers, animals, night, morning bells, love and a child - tell him. Even at this brief level of explanation angels double for the morning bells, and we have the distinguished expertise of Mr Donald Mitchell to help us integrate all this with what the composer had to say about it at greater length elsewhere. The marching has a sinister sound to it for one thing, and we could tell that from the music without any commentary. It is not my own usual idea of summer, and it is reinforced by military-sounding bugle-calls later in the work. Mr Mitchell takes us like Virgil through higher and higher circles of imagery. Evolution is apparently symbolised, by summer and by the innocent-sounding suggestions of summer, birds, animals and whatnot, at one level. However Nietzsche is here too in the fourth movement with his familiar aspiration to escape the bondage of meaning and the intellect, and in the fifth movement there is another setting from Mahler's beloved Knaben Wunderhorn, expressive of innocence obviously, whatever the further import of innocence might be in this context.

By 1999 Mr Mitchell had been at this kind of hermeneutics for a good 45 years to my certain recollection. What he doesn't try to do, no doubt wisely, is suggest what order the composer's thoughts came in - did the extraneous ideas suggest the music, was it the other way round, or is there no way of telling, as I myself suspect is the case? If one may say so without unintended disrespect, Mahler's chatter was of a familiar aesthete's kind in his time. There is no way that I can see of making anything completely coherent out of his statements, and Mr Mitchell has more sense than to try to. It is all more suggestive of a painting with different levels of images overlaid on one another, and I like to think that tact and discretion would debar any of us from asking such a Maler with naïve incomprehension `what it means'. Anyway, there is also an alternative liner note not much more than half the length in German. This I have not attempted to read from reasons of faintheartedness, but French-speaking listeners have the opportunity of reading Mr Mitchell's musings in their own tongue, presumably in an accurate and idiomatic translation.

At the end of the day, music is music. Any ideas and concepts it may be connected with do not have to be coherent, but the music itself does. I love Mahler, I felt a duty to struggle through the familiar process of wrestling with the background concepts that he himself expounded with such enthusiasm, but as usual I was happy to forget all that before long. This music coheres magnificently to my own ears, this performance coheres magnificently, the execution is superlative and the recording seems to me to do them all justice if you set your controls right. It is perhaps my own outright favourite among the Mahler symphonies, I have no good explanation for why it has been absent from my collection for so long, and whatever other fine versions may be available I would say with confidence that you ought not to feel you could go wrong with this one.