Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 3: Recorded 1969

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While there are some demerits to point out, this is the CD we Mahler and Barbirolli fans have hoped for.

First the caveats. The playing of the Halle Orchestra is variable. It sounds as though each movement was allowed only one take, not a live recording-with-audience, but "live on tape," and though it has a degree of continuity that is rare, I'm sure many players wish they had a second chance at numerous passages. Many important solos do come off well. The big one - the trombone - may be a bit beyond this player's technique. On the other hand, the music is supposed to be elemental and this guy got that better than many finer technicians who deliver too refined an interpretation.

The recording is far better than I'd hoped. Stereo, well balanced, with good bass. The dynamics are generally realistic, though the median level wanders enough to make you unsure just where to set the volume. I found it necessary to adjust frequently (glad to have remote control!), but the variation is not great, and it doesn't get seriously in the way of understanding the performance. I'm sure hiss filtering was applied, and except for some dulling of the top end, it's acceptable. Maybe the master was way too noisy, but I wonder how much of the space in the hall was lost by this processing. All in all, the sound takes you there quite effectively and conveys the performance well.

As to the interpretation: I have not lived with this recording enough to be decided on it's ultimate merit, but I can tell you that it is one of the handful of recordings that reflect a genuine understanding of what Mahler was getting at. The gradual development in sophistication from the beginning to the finale is clear not just in the music as written but in the way it is played. Barbirolli doesn't short the myriad moments of magic, yet he doesn't dawdle, emote or trademark in the manner of a certain noted Mahlerian. (Okay the first NYPO recording is well [not over-] done with spectacular playing and in great sound on the most recent reissue.) The finale is not distended to a painful stretch but instead serves as a musically logical culmination of the piece and still a thing of heart touching beauty.

I put this document alongside the recording by Horenstein as the best the third has received. The LSO plays much better, but Sir John's people are deeply engaged. Barbirolli's might be better recorded (I only know Horenstein's from LPs - when will Unicorn price the CD appropriately? I have the first symphony on CD and it is better than the Nonesuch album, but still not great); Horenstein's is better produced. Both conductors get to Mahler more fully than any others in my experience.

I hate those usually inflated stars, but on the curve, this one does get five.

Sir John Barbirolli's inspired studio recording of Mahler's huge Symphony No. 3 is a revelation for me. After hearing this music by a handful of conductors, some with big Mahler reputations, this was the first recording that not only fully expressed the composer's passion in a unified document, it also aptly demonstrated the overall scope and dimension of the tri-part score, with its two choral-vocal middle sections surrounded by a pair of purely orchestral halves.

Sir John made this recording with his Halle Orchestra, contralto Kerstin Meyer and a pair of choirs about he time I was graduating from high school. A conductor beloved for his passion, generally slow but neither meandering nor episodic pace in recordings, and dedication to the music of countryman Edward Elgar (Barbirolli was born a cockney Londoner), it is Sir John's patience that allows every aspect of the score made available to us sonically in the first orchestral half, a 33-minute movement divided into 10 tracks on the first CD of this set.

This opening section, labeled labeled Kraftig. Entscheiden, is where nature begin to sprout through the brass section. This long, volatile entrance is followed by sections of whimsical, childlike humor that are contrasted with grosteque musical imagery, Mahler's way of demonstrating nature's development and God's hand in same. The posthorn solo toward the end of this long movement's Sehr gemachlich section is outstanding and touching, setting the scene to end the opening of the repertory's lengthiest symphony, which goes on for more than 90 minutes.

Kerstin Meyer's wide vibrato tends to work against simplicity in the "Das Knaben Wunderhorn" text that opens the choral section. The children's chorus that follows is somewhat unfocused but they sing with much affection and great beauty about meadows, forests, springtime and morning. Mahler's ode to nature could hardly be more fully realized than in this traversal, whose glories are often counted twofold by way of Sir John's deliberate pacing.

The second orchestral half follows, an ode to more of what God and nature tell us. For the first time through this recording I became aware of a direct link to Mahler's predecessor symphony, the "Resurrection" in the Langsam Ruhevoll secitons, where themes began to sound familiar. Later on, one theme even reminded me of a famous moment from Beethoven's "Fidelio". The kinship between this nature and God-derived music and the previous "Ressurection" symphony, a paean to the Christian idea of afterlife, was illuminated and made more tangible for me than ever before.

The playing of the Halle Orchestra is magnificent in this recording. The brass and woodwind sections, in particular, are displayed in great detail and are completely fulfilling in the 1969 recording made in Manchester's Free Trade Hall. While the Halle strings are not Philadelphia's, the all important timpani are also well represented in Sir John's reading. The overall detail, depth and balance is very good and is another in a long time of exceptional recordings from the BBC.

British critic Tony Duggan has reviewed and recommended recordings of all the Mahler symphonies, incluidng this one. His explanations of this symphony about God and nature go into excrutiating details. For an enlightening view of the contents of this or any other Mahler symphony, see http://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/index.html

This is something special - perhaps Barbirolli may now be recognized as not only a great Mahler conductor, but the most underrated of all the 20th century podium geniuses. No doubt his leaving the New York Philharmonic for a backwater orchestra played a major role in this underestimating of his great talents.

In this performance we have a near-definitive first movement - not exactly anayltical as some modern versions are, but quite untouched for gripping storytelling. The works closeness to Humperdinck is manifest throughout, but this is a far more sinister and sophisticated depiction of the German Natur. Again, just as Monteux was so amazing in evoking the tale of Scheherazade so Barbirolli manages to produce the musical equivalent of a deep journey into a fantastic world of sprites and darker forces.

Some of you may wonder if that was what Mahler had in mind, but it works for me!

A fabulous recording in a style of music-making lost for ever.

I have Berlin 3rd in mono Arkadia edition. A friend bought me the Testament STEREO reissue and this BBC edition because not sure which I wanted, and gave me both!

Mahler scholar and erstwhile conductor Deryck Cooke revered this BBC performance as one of the finest Mahler 3rds extant, recommended it to EMI for issue which they declined. Alas for EMI, it is indeed beautifully played in general and very spaciously and atmospherically recorded with some mild distortion here and there but with a marvelous sense of hall depth and clear imaging of the instruments; the woodwind outbursts in Mvmt 1 jump out of the speakers so realistically it is positively deligthful. Overall this performances possesses a cohesiveness and understanding that came out of 15 years of Sir John's rigorously and lovingly training this band of Brits to play Mahler in proper style (slurpy portamenti and all) that even the Berliners at the time could not match.

Upon comparison of the Berlin and Hallé renditions, frankly I prefer the Manchesters' playing of the piece, (inconsequential surface) warts and all; I find Miss Meyer's reedy contralto unobjectionable tonally and yet quite expressively moving. Lucretia West on Testament is not markedly superior, but certainly neither holds a candle to Christa Ludwig.

The Testament reissue for all its "sostenuto misterioso" by comparison is rather disappointingly lugubrious and bloated (especially the tubby sonics and tape dropouts right from the start), a bit too smoothly intoned by Karajan's orchestra and with recorded sound that is barely stereo, exceedingly "fat" sound lacking in detail because muffled from too much filtering. Snore...

This BBC set, on the other hand, is just terrific!

Born John the Baptist (Giovanni Battista) Barbirolli, which got simplified to John when he joined the British army, Barbirolli has been posthumously sainted in British music circles. He devoted his last decade before his death in 1970 to Mahler. Oddly, becasue Karajan excluded almost all of Mahler's music from the Berlin Phil's repertoire until a late conversion, it was an Englishman who brought the Third Sym. to the orchestra and trained them in it. This occurred during a Mahler fest that was followed, in May 1969, by this stduio recording with his own Halle Orchestra.

Right off the bat one notices that the recorded sound is good commercial quality and that the orchestra plays well, even fervently. The ensemble and solo work aren't world class, but Barbirolli admirers have long ago adjusted to the Halle's limitations. What counts here, as always, is the conductor's deeply committed approach. Mahler's enormous, multi-colored sound world is difficult to make coherent, much less personal. Barbirolli manages to do that, putting himself in a league with Klemperer, Bernstein, Walter, and Tennstedt. All of them had enough strength to make Mahler their own.

The other five-star reviewers have already given the particulars for each movement. Tempo and phrasing are at times routine rather than original (a feature that bothered the Gramophone's less-than-enthusiastic reviewer), yet the finale, with its old-fashioned portamenti and loving tenderness, could only have come from Barbirolli. What finally matters in Mahler is that you feel inexorably drawn into an imaginary world much larger than yourself, and for me, Barbirolli's Third accomplished that without question.

barbirolil condactor this performance at 1969. with the Halle Philharmonic Orchestra, and the contralto Kerstin Meyer. barbirolli condactor with a big passion to mahler music. and the orchestra sound very speacial, with a very powerful vision on this mahler symphony. ther is a feeling of wonder and mistories. that are oll in the mind of barbirolli, who transition the power of his vision to his player orchestra. and that is what make this preformance to a very speacoal.

Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.3 is a work that I find new things in with each listening. This recording is no exception. This is one of my favorite version with Bernstein's first recording of this work a close second. I'll start with the orchestra. The Halle Orchestra is the oldest in England, and one of the most respected. These are also definitely British horns, very full and dark sounding. Yes the playing is a little rough around the edges, but the orchestra digs into their parts with such aplomb and vigor that this is soon forgotten. They never tire out and the commitment from these players is worthy of high praise. Secondly, one can definitely hear the hall in this recording. I can occasionally hear reverb, but it's never overwhelming. The soundstage is also very generous, with a very nice fullness at the lower end of the spectrum. Thirdly, Sir John Barbirolli holds the entire work together very well, and captures every moment along the way. The only correctly paced Mahler Third that I have ever heard. This is just an earthy, nature filled performance. Mahler's mighty paen to Nature comes to life. This is a recording where everything went very, very right. 10 stars.

Bravi tutti!

barbirolil condactor this performance at 1969. with the Halle Philharmonic Orchestra, and the contralto Kerstin Meyer. barbirolli condactor with a big passion to mahler music. and the orchestra sound very speacial, with a very powerful vision on this mahler symphony. ther is a feeling of wonder and mistories. that are oll in the mind of barbirolli, who transition the power of his vision to his player orchestra. and that is what make this preformance to a very speacoal.

I adore Barbirolli, and in particular his Mahler recordings. Less so with his recording of the 4th (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra) where they mar every movement, this recording with Halle suffers from God awful brass in the final movement. What was Sir John's problem with them?