The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the oldest concert orchestra in the world, and their Music Director Riccardo Chailly have already acquired legendary status – glorious reviews and many awards for their recordings testifying to their continuing success. At Leipzig’s International Mahler Festival, to mark the centenary of Mahler’s death, they performed his monumental Second Symphony in the Gewandhaus – together with two marvellous soloists and choral forces quite beyond compare. About the final movement the composer said: “The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.”
Picture Format Blu-ray: Full HD
Sound Formats Blu-ray: DTS HD Master Audio, PCM Stereo
Region Code: 0 (worldwide)
Running Time: 95:42 min
Disc Format: BD 25
FSK: 0
January 2012
****
“[Chailly] has turned wiry Gewandhaus strings into muscular proponents; the first real moment of magic is when he gives the cor anglais space to etch the Alpine idyll at the heart of the first movement...Chailly's facial expressions rightly express his sheer sense of visceral enjoyment...And Sarah Connolly's part in the proceedings is surprisingly intense”
February 2012
*****
“this one is something special. The acoustic of Leipzig's Gewandhaus hall is a star in itself: the offstage horn and trumpet fanfares sound as thrilling as the orchestra's playing, itself near-fabulous from start to finish...[Chailly's] conducting charts a wonderfully sure path through Mahler's epic conception. And in the 'Urlicht' movement Sarah Connolly's singing, like the orchestra's playing, is as moving and beautiful as it's possible to imagine.”
15th October 2011
****
“these are red-blooded performances. The Italian conductor has long been a respected Mahlerian, capable of welding the symphonies’ huge structures and quixotic moods into a coherent musical statement...Sarah Connolly deliver[s] a radiant “Urlicht””
January 2012
“Chailly's Resurrection is unashamedly mainstream, more straightforward than Bernstein's, sunnier and more muscular than Abbado's, with forthright contributions from harp and percussion...the excellent Sarah Connolly provides a lovely, intimate reading of the 'Urlicht' and there is no lack of tension as the epic finale crashes in...Christane Oelze is outstanding too, at once bright and warm.”
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