Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'

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…Fischer… rarely pushes too hard. The orchestral sound is lean but not undernourished, allowing for even balance between contesting lines - outstanding in the funereal coda of the first movement... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2006, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 14th Aug 2006
Catalogue No: CCSSA23506
Label: Channel
Series: Iván Fischer Mahler Symphonies
Length: 82 minutes

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Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'

Work length1:22:18

Album only

Birgit Remmert, Hungarian Radio Choir, Lisa Milne
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer

I. Allegro maestoso

Track length21:46

Album only

II. Andante moderato

Track length10:02

$1.50

$2.10

$2.60

$3.05

III. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung

Track length11:18

$2.05

$2.80

$3.50

$4.05

IV. Urlicht, "Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not". Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht (Contralto)

Track length4:52

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

$2.05

V. Im Tempo des Scherzos - Langsam. Misterioso, "Aufersteh'n" (Chorus, Soprano) - Etwas bewegter, " O glaube, mein Herz … Aufersteh'n" (Alto, Soprano, Chorus)

Track length34:20

Album only

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Reviews

October 2006

…Fischer… rarely pushes too hard. The orchestral sound is lean but not undernourished, allowing for even balance between contesting lines - outstanding in the funereal coda of the first movement - and a clearer than usual interplay between gleaming upper brass and woodwind.

2010

Stylistically, Fischer is right on the money. He has a keen nose for Mahler's particular brand of the ebb and flow of the music, the way it speaks, or rather sings; the bucolic and melodramatic elements of the score are vividly conflicted; and best of all Fischer really breathes in the atmosphere of Mahler's precipitous flight to eternity.
The second theme of the first movement, which Mahler requests enter tentatively, shyly, does exactly that – Fischer's violins are barely audible, a rosy horizon briefly glimpsed through this bleak and forbidding landscape.
Few take this first movement to the edge of possibility that Mahler so clearly envisaged. Fischer does not shirk the often reckless extremes of tempo and dynamics but nor does he throw caution to the four winds in the terrifying stampede to its cliff-hanging climax. Leonard Bernstein is probably still alone in doing just that. But there are many other compensations here: a great sense of logic and line, a second movement whose homespun accenting belongs to a bygone era, likewise the close-harmony trumpets in the trio of the third movement so touchingly redolent of another time, another place.
But the crowning glory is, as it should be, the finale – and it is here that Fischer, his performers and his engineers, really excel. The 'special effects' of Mahler's elaborate Judgement Day fresco have rarely been so magically realised.
The offstage horns are so breathtakingly remote as to suggest the world of the living left far behind. Moments of quite extraordinary stasis precede the sounding of the Dies irae and the hushed entry of the chorus. And come the peroration (resplendent with fabulous horns), Fischer knows that it is with that final crescendo of the chorus and only then that the heavens really open. Impressive.

Awards 2006

The sound is distinctive, the music-making personal. … the crowning glory is, as it should be, the finale… The "special effects" of Mahler's elaborate Judgement Day fresco have rarely been so magically realised. The offstage horns are so breathtakingly remote as to suggest the world of the living left far behind. Moments of quite extraordinary stasis precede the sounding of the Dies irae and the hushed entry of the chorus. And come the peroration (resplendent with fabulous horns), Fischer knows that it is with that final crescendo of the chorus and only then that the heavens really open. Impressive.

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'

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