Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 4 [Hybrid SACD]

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One Mahler recording issued in 2008 truly stands out among the lot - and that's the Concertgebouw's performance of the Fourth Symphony with Bernard Haitink conducting and Christine Schäfer taking the soprano part. A Fourth Symphony can easily be undone by an inappropriate soprano (Gielen/Whittlesey, Abbado/Fleming), but it can't be `made' by a great singer. Well, maybe Schäfer could actually, because her soprano is simply perfect for "Das himmlische Leben". Clarity and beauty of tone are a given with her, but the innocence, the angelic ring that she believably exudes is exactly what the symphony (and Mahler) asks for. In theory a treble might be better, still, but put into practice it simply doesn't work.

Fortunately Schäfer doesn't have to rescue anything here, she's simply the crowning glory of what is a superb performance, already. Haitink is generally short on cutting and acerbic tones in Mahler, and long on beauty. So here. The Fourth Symphony benefits from beauty and suffers not from the absence of tortuous and biting sounds, as for example the Sixth would. Generous, rich, and yet transparent, there is plenty of that beauty to go around here. The RCO plays with near-perfection (this is a true live recording, not patched from several performances), its usual gorgeousness and grandeur of sound, which is caught perfectly by the recording engineers. This sumptuous performance has now replaced my long-held top choice for the Fourth, which had been Inbal's recording with Helen Donath (Denon/Brilliant).

In concert Haitink's Mahler succeeds through exemplary balances and refined phrasing, qualities that can be flattened out in recordings. Some critics don't give him the benefit of the doubt, finding his Mahler too undernourished. This new Fourth from a live Concertgebouw concert is elegantly played and ultra-civilized, but that's not code for boring. Many listeners may appreciate Haitink's refusal to fuss over every detail of the score -- you will notice immediately that the first movement proceeds at a steady pulse unless a sizable ritard is called for. This plainness puts Haitink at a far remove from Bernstein, Levine, and Abbado, who favor much more freedom of expression.

For me, the low-key approach seems somewhat outdated. We expect conductors to explore the rich drama and color of Mahler's idiom rather than play it straight. With Haitink, the devil's fiddle is quite gentlemanly in the second movement, for example, which I don't think the composer intended. The Adagio is played exquisitely by the Concertgebouw's incomparable strings; a moderate timing of 20 min. allows the music to flow without undue haste or tardiness. The climactic opening of the gates of heaven errs on the mild side. At 9:38 the finale is also moderate. Christine Schafer's voice has darkened considerably with age, and she makes for a rather mature child, not to mention that not all the notes are in place with steady assurance. I'd call her an average soloist in a field that includes the delightful Barbara Bonney, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Kiri Te Kanawa.

I've noted these reservations so that the prospective buyer will have some idea of the contours of Haitink's interpretation. Yet overall this is a masterfully handled reading, and when you add the orchestra's affectionate, glowing playing and RCO's usual fine sound, even an old-fashioned reading can turn out to be beautiful on all counts.

To the topic of this and other SACD on the Concertgebouw/Label recording properties:
The local Dutch recording engineers hired by the Concertgebouw to "immortalize" this or other live concert for posterity and market it in the SACD version, in the process they have come up with a faulty product.
Be it as it may, from the stand point of interpretation (reading) which is not the concern here, the end product is disappointing in the Audio sense.

The equipment used by the recording team here might easily be one the most advanced there is; It is capable of capturing the sound in almost all of its clarity, with great wide frequency-range and sometimes great dynamics, but the concept of where to put the microphones and where the sound is captured from is wrong, wrong, wrong.

It is wrong in the sense that they offer us a sit at the back of the Concertgebouw hall balcony, distanced and far away from where the action takes place, when there is so much better prospective over the orchestra and hall acoustics from middle of the hall, or from a sit closer to the orchestra.

We should not dream here of the golden age, the dawn of the stereo era (Reiner/Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra, a two channel recording technique immortalized by Leslie Chase for RCA, 1954) that would be a bit like comparing oranges with apples.
But instead, we can compare various recordings from this present age - recordings made on location at the same Concertgebouw hall with this SACD recording at hand:
To compare, take the Rachmaninov symphony 1 & 2 (DDD):
It has all of the sonic components to boost: Great tonality, great dynamic range - AND - great outlook on the orchestra, great sound-stage and retrieval of hall ambience - all this if compared to the present SACD (the Concertgebouw own label) - the SACD sound stage will barely expand beyond the two front speakers and will sound like a somewhat stretched mono recording; no true spread, no true soundstage (multi-microphones technique went wrong?)

Note in this regards recordings made by Decca and by Philips on location at the Concertgebouw hall were much more successful in conveying the total sound--picture:
Take the Philips ADD recording of Stravinsky/ Firebird, Petruschka, Rite of Spring / Concertgebouw/Colin Davis;
Take the Rachmaninov Symphonies, (Decca DDD recording) with Ashkenazy.
Take the Philips ADD recording of Ravel with Haitink, take the Grieg/Schumann with Arrau and Haitink, and more, much more - all have this property of conveying a concert-hall "feel".

The decision of the Dutch recording team made for the Concertgebouw label of how and from where to capture the sound - I am sure - will not get down the history pages as great achievements the way Mohr-Layton & Leslie Chase (RCA); Cornall-Moorfoot, Culshaw-Perry, Kenneth Wilkinson (Decca) and other team achievements for Philips too.

Simply put; the Concertgebouw "sound" on their propriety label is too distanced, taken from too far away, has a tunnel-like sound-view - a strange and faulty approach to sound engineering.
As such, the Concertgebouw own label is a disappointment.