Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor - Resurrection

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am not a blind-eyed, totally rabid fan of Ivan Fischer's work. Loved his Bartok series, hated his recent Tchaikovsky Fourth. That said, I concur with the other positive reviews here. This Mahler Second is enormously effective, heartfelt because it's never over-the-top. You catch the subtle things, the ironies, the humor, the innocence of the folk poetry, and much more. And the final movement really does become APOCALYPTIC. It's the most terrifying depiction of the Last Trump, etc., etc., ever composed, and (with this recording) ever put on disc. This is partly the nature of the Super Audio CD recording process, with its unbelievably wide dynamic range and these engineers' ability to capture, as someone said, the big and little tam-tams, the church bells, all the phenomenal detail Mahler builds into it.

Which is not to emphasize technical matters over musical ones. Fischer and his forces are unfailingly musical and expressive -- the briefest instrumental solos are handled with aplomb and real character, the tuttis are stunning. It's all shaped by a man who knows how to make Mahler's universe palpable for 21st-century audiences.

Get this, and go get yourself an SACD player so you can hear every last bit of it. (Although I suspect that even the Redbook CD version captures what's essential.)

This is a dissenting opinion, a review of a performance that was not to my taste. I'm not going to bash it because I don't think it's a bad or actively offensive performance of Mahler's work, but I do find it lacking in too many of the elements that to me are essential to a satisfying interpretation of this music.

When I first discovered Mahler's symphonies, at the time I was in college, they were through the performances by Bernard Haitink, which had been held in very high esteem in certain quarters but taken to task for being too "sane" in others. These interpretations were seen as the antithesis of Leonard Bernstein's overtly (or overly) emotive ones. I've never developed a stomach for Bernstein's Mahler, though it has many, many adherents. Given that, I expected that a more objective interpretation, which I'd read Ivan Fischer provides, would be to my liking. But I think his reading is far too low-keyed and underpowered to generate even the excitement that Haitink's could, not to mention Bernstein's. When I found myself longing for some of the throat-grabbing emotionalism that Lenny could bring, I knew something was amiss.

To me the difficulties began at the first bar. Rather than a stirring held chord, what I heard sounded weak. There was no fire, no sense of suspense, and the orchestra, as it would throughout the performance, sounded noticeably small. The second theme was quite beautifully played, lovely and radiant, but that loveliness and radiance seemed to inform most of the movement, and this, in my opinion, is not music that should sound pretty. The second movement, on the other hand, which presents one of Mahler's simplest and most beautiful melodies, seemed overinterpreted. The music never flowed but sounded micromanaged bar by bar. As I told a friend of mine, I had to rely on my memory of this music to follow what was being played. The scherzo struck me as dull, with none of the sinister or even ironic quality that seems so much a part of it. That's where my first listen ended. Then, out of curiosity and fairness, I gave it another spin. No better. The "Urlicht" was sung beautifully enough, but it didn't tug at my heart the way it has in other performances, and the finale seemed no more apocalyptic than a barbershop glee until the final pages that, for me, were ruined by overprominent percussion, turning the piece into a spectacle through which it lost any sense of spiritual transcendence.

Criticism is a tricky thing. Everybody has his or own life experiences that shape his or her taste, so what satisfies one will not necessarily satisfy another. This recording has garnered praise from many quarters, and I wish I could add to that praise, but I can't. Delicate, refined, and polite when it's not sounding vulgar and manipulative, this is not a performance I can endorse.

This is an absolutely fabulous performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony.....For those of you lucky enough to have heard this same conductor and orchestra in Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, you will find an equal poise and sensitivity here, beautiful and moving in extraordinary sound - such as one finds particularly in SACD recordings, and if the final movement doesn't lift you to the proverbial heavens, you'd better get your ears checked!

Let me add that Fischer brings great drama to this magnificent work, and if hardly challenging early Bernstein for sturm und drang along the way, there are thrills a plenty, easily besting the overly-praised Rattle version for example. To be fair, Fischer's orchestra does not fully equal the Berlin Philharmonic in heft and ensemble, but the solo parts are even more exquisite here, and many details far more ravishing than you have ever heard before.

Even if you are still not the proud owner of an SACD player, listening to this in just plain stereo will give you such pleasure, you'll play it again and again, grateful for what you do hear now in anticipation of what you will hear later when SACD will reveal the full glory of this stupendous performance.

Before my actual review, I'd like to get something off my chest...

I read all these Amazon reviews and wonder who these experts are.

Especially the Mahler guys..

How do they know what Mahler wanted? He's been dead almost a Century, but these reviewers act like they just spoke to him yesterday.

I am a musician for 40+ years. I'm pretty good at it. I don't pretend to know what Mahler was thinking, BUT I KNOW MUSIC.

And creativity should know no bounds. Who's to say this is too slow, too fast, not enough angst, Not enough emotion, too much emotion and on and on...

I think the great conductors know more about this than I do and unless they change the notes, every interpretation has validity.

How about, just great music and musicality.

The complaints about Fischer/Mahler are way off the mark..

First, he follows the score closer to the letter than MOST.

Second, He eschews (OVER)-bombast for transparency and clarity so you can hear every wonderful note Mahler wrote and every instrument he chose to play them. You will hear notes and instruments you've never heard before. How can this be a bad thing? They are there in the Score.

Third, He conducts Mahler as Beautiful, soulful, dynamic, exciting where it's supposed to be and most of all with more Musicality than others. While still hitting all the gargantuan climaxes and big notes spot on. Only now they make more sense.

Fourth, He is neither too fast or too slow, but close to perfect with absolutely NO loss of excitement, exhileration and the "lilt" he brings this music will place a broad smile on your face many times during this performance. along with some oooooh chills.

FIVE, this is NOT a second rate orchestra. This is a unit hand picked by Fischer from among the greatest musicians in Hungary and from around the globe. Fabulous string and woodwinds and great bottom and horns- not dissimilar to the Czech PO.

To me this is the perfect 2nd. Dead center of the "too much" and the "not enough". Truly Mahler for the 21st Century.

Now, Mahler also REQUIRES state of the art sound for all this to work.

This SACD brings it Baby! Even in 2 channel stereo it is far above any other recording of any piece of music I have.
You can hear everything. Astonishingly transparent, crystal clear, warm, rich, oh so Smooth bottom, front to back depth, and Perfect dynamic range. The best sound recording I've yet to hear.

So, if like me, You have no clue of Mahler's intentions, and care just about the music and how beautiful and alive it can sound, and want to expand your Mahler vocabulary, then this Extraordinary Musical Experience is the Mahler to own whether you have SACD or not.
If you want your Mahler to Terrorize you, kick you in the ribs and punch you in the belly and make you bleed and leave you so angst ridden that you need medication, then this one is probably NOT for you.

On Total... This is a STUNNING performance in STUNNING sound likely to be a new reference of this work and may have you reevaluating your opinions re: Mahler 2.

OH.....
If the price of this CD is a little steep for some, I recommend 2 less expensive alternatives with most of the above attributes... Levi/Atlanta and Slatkin/St.Louis SO (the SACD only)...Both on Telarc.. they come closest to 3 important criteria for total enjoyment... the combination of conducting. orchestra performance and demonstration bracket sound.

This is a truly great recording. The only other recent Mahler 2 in this league is Thomas-San Francisco, and this one is better. The recorded sound is great and the orchestra is in top form. Fischer captures that elusive 'Mahler sound' here. Many recordings of this symphony don't seem to caputre the extreme volume contrasts in this piece, but this recording finally does. The ppp is terribly quiet, and the big climaxes are huge. This recording never falters and I think this is the best Mahler 2 currently available.

Wow, everything really sounds right in this performance, which easily tops my favorite modern accounts by Kaplan, Chailly and Rattle in terms of interpretation, sound (I heard the SACD layer) and overall mood. Like Kaplan and Chailly, Fischer takes time to build and reveal the musical/dramatic discourse and doesn't give everything away in the first movement (like Rattle)...yet Fischer's 1st movement is more devastating in the contrasts, like the aftermath of the climax at the beginning of the development section...made more serious by the fact that there is no "added" interpretation that I can hear between the lyrical and dramatic sections. Indeed, this among is the least "romantic" of all M2's I've heard (Mehta's NYPO 1982 M2 is another). I have this impression because the playing is not overly exaggerated, rather the score is played straight without judgement or literal discourse. I am impressed how Fischer doesn't give in to the temptation to overdo every climax.

In the 1st movement, the lyrical sections are felt more because overall, the performance of the "allegro maestoso" sections are the sound of an apathetic universe, which is why the second movement finally makes more sense than I'm used to...the contrast and lyrical connection to the 1st movement is underlined with the warm timbre of dancing strings and the controlled expression and grace of the tempos...played in this manner, the 2nd movement couldn't be more different from the sarcastic 3rd movement, which is executed with even more rustic character and color, and the atmospheric trumpet section sounds soft and otherworldly...a hint of the finale to come...not overplayed or literal...just played as it is. The Urlicht is beautifully sung by Birgit Remmart, with her tone and the illuminated execution of the orchestra a different world is conjured from what we heard before...that of surrender and light. A Mozartian grace appears in this performance for the first time, and the orchestral sound is that of repose and stillness...the first glimpse of the "other" side...very subtle and refined.

Somehow all these contrasts are held together, coherent but allowing the extreme contrasts to shine. The finale really hits hard, especially at the final measures, where suddenly the universe cracks into a another dimension altogether. I kept hearing the ghost of Mozart between the transparent choir and the clarity and graceful playing of the orchestra (the voice of Lisa Milne contrasts nicely with Remmart and the choir). Before this enlightenment occurs, the contrast between the "cold universe" and lyrical nostalgic vistas reoccur without exaggeration, until the climatic percussion crescendo pushes the envelope beyond structure and balance (as I imagine Mahler intended here) of the entire work. Bravo to the orchestra, which reminded me of Scherchen's Vienna State Opera Orchestra in his M2, because it doesn't sound like a large orchestra, and the sound is lean and intimate during the lesser scored sections. The whole performance appears to fly by...I usually go for slower tempos, but this M2 is built so well it doesn't matter.

After having read all of the reviews here I was surprised to find myself tending more toward a negative appraisal if this recording.

There is on this page, in the main, such high enthusiasm for Mr. Fischer's view of this piece and such praise for the engineering of the recording
that, although I have never done so before, I feel the need to add my words to the aggregate.

In the face of all of the crucial elements which are necessary to fully convey a great musical work such as this, it's a struggle for a solitary listener
such as I to give satifactory expression to the actual experience of the work in performance with regard to his own conception of a totally involving
and moving presentation.

With this recorded performance I am faced with the curious case of a highly competant technically polished performance in which everything is present
but the whole doesn't really speak. Tempi are quite slow in all, and there are rubati within phrases to the extent of halting any real sense of forward motion and demolishing any possibility of pulse and coherance.

What does occur is an assemblage of parts which never make up a whole, and never reach the core.

The recording presents a perspective on the orchestra which is oddly distant and homgenized so that the dialogues among the instruments becomes suffused
in a miasma of "large orchestra and chorus" sound. Precisely where is the listener in this musical space?

This is not a terribly bad performance/recording...just a rather neutral realization which may suffice for those who have not heard performances of this piece by
Klemperer, Walter, or Bernstein. The recordings made by those three are utterly riveting; one's attention simply cannot wander as it does, sadly, with the current
example.

I'll go so far as to call this the best overall Mahler "Resurrection" ever to have been recorded - and I say that as someone who has listened to pretty much every one in great detail. Rather than list all the why's, I'll simply refer you to David Hurwitz's detailed review at Classicstoday.com. I'll just simply add that this one shows ALL of the positive characteristics of the recent Boulez/Vienna Phil. Mahler 2nd, but with none of the drawbacks. To be specific, there's sufficient organ here (almost none on the Boulez), and Fischer's scherzo catches all of the implied irony and humor that the Boulez totally lacks. Fischer matches Boulez in capturing the massive sonorities of the brass in the fifth movement, and even trumps him in making Mahler's exacting polyphony for the percussion at the end of the symphony perfectly clear and audible (deep bells, plus high and low pitched tam-tams). In addition, Birgit Remmart is every bit as good as Michelle De Young is, and Fischer does a better job of pegging the first movement's climax than Boulez does.

In truth, I'm not trying to run down the Boulez, which does have some great moments. Instead, I'm just pointing out that with Fischer - combined with Channel Classics' excellent sonics - you can have your cake and eat it too. One small drawback: Fischer is on two discs while Boulez fits on one. Neither Fischer or Boulez provide any extra tracks for the long fifth movement (aaaarghhhh!). Still, these are minor points, and are certainly nothing to pass the Fischer recording over for. In other words, get it!

This is one recording of the Mahler Second where the sound, even in two-channel stereo, so dominates the experience that it almost becomes the performance. I don't think I've ever heard a recording of this work where one gets such a sense of real life, not so much because of the loudest passages as the softest. We are placed so close that we breathe with the musicians and singers. On the large scale there is tremendous vividness in the percussion especially, and overall a lively sense of the acoustic space. Channel Classics has always tended to have very good sound, and here they are in top form.

As for the interpretation, it's also strong. In the opening movement Ivan Fischer immediately joins the "straight" Mahlerians like Szell and Reiner for whom precision and correctness come first, and who avoid the extremes of Mahl'ers turbulent emotional world. In the past I've been bothered by Fischer's tendency to make Mahler's socres pleasant, letting nuance and lyricism go too far. That happens here somewhat; there is such lingering sweetness that one forgets that the composer intended this movement to be a funeral rite (Totenfeier). But it's a long movement with many mood swings, and I adapted to Fischer's tender touch, because he respects the need for fierceness when called for. Nothing is truly savage or wild, but one could say the same about Bruno Walter's Mahler as he aged.

A few disgruntled reviewers claim that Fischer's tempos are to slow for the reading to really catch fire, but his first movement, at 21 min., is within a few seconds of Zubin Mehta's (with the Vienna Phil. on Decca), 2 min. faster than Bernstein with the London Sym. on Sony, and a few minutes slower than Otto Klemperer, surprisingly, on EMI. The pace of the second movement is actually jaunty for a minuet. Fischer is lighter in his touch and more delicate in his phrasing than anyone else I know - I feel that he has prettified the music too much, but the dramatic middle section is certainly given due weight.

The engineers capture the flavor of each solo instrument so well in the Scherzo that this movement is one where the sound becomes the performance. Fischer is able to get away with a literalist view, like David zinman's, that ignores the cheeky, satiric treatment of St. Anthony preaching to an open-mouthed congregation of fish. by this time each listener will know if "straight" Mahler full of pretty touches and gorgeous sounds is a good recipe. In her "Urlicht" solo, Birgit Remmert displays a tone closer to alto than mezzo, which suits the song; she is timid as an interpreter, however, and tremulous vocally.

Even the most restrained and controlled Mahler conductors, such as Pierre Boulez, recognize that heaven and earth must move in the finale. Fischer's overall timing of 34 min. isn't out of the ordinary, but I had my doubts over how well his pleasantness would fare in the midst of apocalypse. The long orchestral introduction is scrupulous in giving us the offstage brass that Mahler wanted, but the pacing drags, and there's a certain flatness. The Budapest Festival Orch. isn't in the top tier of orchestras, but they play resoundingly here in passages that call for massed power. Thunderours rolls on bass drum and tam-tam are ear-catching, but for me nothing special happens musically - I'd expect to hear a good subscription concert to sound this way. Of the two soloist, soprano Lisa Milne is the more arresting, but both voices blend well. The climax is captured exceedingly well for detail and impact, with a strong emphasis on percussion.

I came away feeling that Fischer's Mahler Second was a real success, and I thoroughly enjoyed the wall-shaking sonics. But a fine performance is less than a great one.

This is a fine Mahler 2. There are many wonderful things, and the recording is great, as are most of the multi-channel SACDs from Channel. There are unfortunate problems, however. It is great to have a real sense of rubato in movt. 2, but do you really need to hold back virtually EVERY downbeat? The timpani at the beginning of movt. 3 is agonisingly out of tune (the reverberation of the top note of the fourth really hard to listen to!), as are various other exposed moments (trumpet sustained high C in the last movt.!). The soloists are both pretty wobbly, sounding about 30 years older than their pictures, and not even close to as good as those in what still is the finest performance of this on CD: Slatkin and St. Louis on Telarc. This recording is never mentioned when the great recordings of the work are brought up, but it is truly wonderful. The tricky thing is that it is showing its age a bit: especially in the last movt., where the background hiss is intrusive if the CD is played loudly enough for the right impact. That said, this is still the only one that gets close to capturing the organ entry near the end, and this new one doesn't quite get there. Channel's philosophy of using the rear channels for ambience only is normally absolutely right, but here I think they missed a huge opportunity by NOT utilising the rear chanels (or at least an element of them) for the offstage band. Many concert halls round the world use a deeply set-back space for these effects, and this could have been hugely effective. Alas no.
It is still a good recording, however, and most will not be dissappointed!

PS - 2009: the Slatkin recording mentioned above is now available in a "fully realised" version on SACD. Any reservations about the age of this recording expressed above are now irrelevant!