Mahler: Symphony No. 3 [Import]

Jessye Norman (Artist), Gustav Mahler (Composer), Claudio Abbado (Conductor), Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Performer), Vienna Boys' Choir (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Boys' Choir
• Conductor: Claudio Abbado
• Composer: Gustav Mahler
• Audio CD (June 11, 1984)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B000001G4T
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #118,488 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #20 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Divas > Norman, Jessye

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my all-time favorites, November 9, 2002

By 

Von R. Smith (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (Audio CD)

Abbado is a great conductor who has a not-entirely-undeserved reputation as an unsteady Mahlerian. But he has always shown a real knack for Mahler's 3rd, and this earlier digital recording with the VPO, Norman, et al. is a case in point. It is one of my favorite Mahler recordings, in spite of having one of the *ugliest* cover designs in existence.

Apart from keeping an audience awake for a 100-plus minute symphony, I think the biggest challenge for anyone interpreting this piece is finding the right balance between its musical and emotional depth and its thrilling showmanship; lean too much one way and the piece becomes too heavy and ponderous, too much the other way and it's a pretty good movie soundtrack but a mediocre symphony. Abbado and the VPO find just the right balance, especially in the first movement, which they manage to present as thrillingly dramatic without being just flashy.
Norman is wonderful, especially in the fourth movement; I can't think of a better performance of this movement on any level.

My only two complaints (besides the horrid color-scheme of the cover art) are about the 3rd and last movements: the posthorn solos in the former have little presence at all. It sounds as though the trumpet soloist, not content with going offstage, decided to keep going down the street to a nearby Vienna cafe and play his solos from there. The last movement, although lovingly and intensely played, is taken a bit more slowly than I would like, something that Abbado doesn't do to me very often.

Still, that isn't a lot to complain about in a piece of this length and size. This is quite simply the best Mahler 3rd in my opinion, and the answer to anyone who says Abbado doesn't get Mahler.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Mahler's Most Dynamic Works, January 30, 2000

By 

William M Choat (Springfield, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (Audio CD)

Mahler's 3rd symphony is one of his most dynamic symphonic pieces, and this recording brings this incredible work to life through a realistic and true reading of the score mixed with a tremendous amount of musicianship. Jessye Norman is stunning, and the choral work is superb. Abbado works so well with this orchestra, and this is my favorite recording of this incredible and vast work.

I first heard this recording in Madrid a few years ago, and since that time I have listened many, many times. One never tires through repeated listenings. What an orchestra! What a conductor! What a soloist! A brilliant and stunning recording!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A triumph, musically and sonically, October 27, 2005

By 

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)

Great musicians can excel even themselves, and that's the case with this 1982 recording of the Mahler Third under Abbado. I had carelessly assumed that Abbado's superb live recording with the Berlin Phil. from 1999, despite some sketchiness in the sonics (it was engineered on the spot in London by the BBC), showed that this conductor had grown as a Mahler interpreter.

I was wrong--Abbado didn't need to grow. This is a stupendous performance in terms of musicality and insight. We are inside Mahler's sound world from the first bar, and there is magic and mystery, tears from childhood and rollicking joy, that only Bernstein's first recording from New York could hope to match. But Bernstein didn't have the Vienna Phil., playing so superbly it defies description, and he didn't have the miraculous sonics that DG somehow contrived so early in the digital era. Abbado, like Karajan, favors extremely hushed pianissimos and thunderously loud fortissimos, both caught here to amazing effect. In fact, the one flaw for many listeners will be how to find a single volume level that can capture the polar extremes in dynamics. Other reviewers have already extolled Jessye Norman, a mesmerizing soloist in the Nietzsche poem from the fourth movement. My only reservation is htat the extremely slow last movement is a bit cool and detached compared to Bernstein.

I want to apologize silently to Abbado for overlooking this accomplishment. He can be a variable condcutor, but on this occasion he reaches the very heights of Mahler interpretation.