Customer Reviews

Symphony 7 / Song of the Night

5 star:		(2)
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Mahler's 7th symphony is an exploration of joy. Until getting to know this work, I had not known that happiness could be so rich a subject for artistic inspiration. As this symphony builds, many hearers find themselves bubbling over, even gasping, with a sense of well-being and profound delight. Mahler's scoring is complex, with cowbells, lute, guitar, and many other innovations. Having composed one "Night Music" movement (no 2) Mahler goes on to provide another (No 4) - a mark of his obvious enchantment with his theme. There are many good recordings of the 7th symphony, but for me this performance under the sure hand of Kurt Masur is the best available. All the subtleties of Mahler's score are attentively and beautifully rendered, and the clarity and energy are utterly satisfying.

Mahler's 7th "The Song of the Night" is probably the most problematic of his symphonies. There is no doubt of the originality and the genius of the music but the orchestration is quite "unique" and the term "symphony" is acceptable only because the great master called it as such. It takes a great baton to hold the music together and present it as a symphony. The situation in this recording couldn't be better - Masur with the Gewandhaus Orchestra make quite a pair. The recording is quite fresh and the energy has no match. Having eight full cycles of the Symphonies I couldn't really find a more vivid or better played Seventh than the one before us. I would call Bernstein's Sony recording and Abbado's with the BPO as probably the best alternatives but I would still go with this one.